Win32::VisualStyles - Apply Win32 Visual (aka XP) Styles to windows Win32::VisualStyles allows you to use the new styled windows controls provided by Microsoft in Comctl32.dll version 6, as supplied with WinXP and later. Before the availability of this module, it was necessary to add a "V6 manifest" to the perl executable, either by embedding it in perl.exe or as a file alongside perl.exe, called perl.exe.manifest. Supplying a manifest as a part of a re-distributable script is problematic, and affects the perl evnironment for all scripts. To turn off visual styles the manifest needs removing (and on Vista the manifest cache needs invalidating, either by rebooting, or by touching the timestamp on the perl.exe file). This module eases the re-distribution problem to one of distributing this module (an issue that all perl authors should be familiar with), and allows for the visual styles to be turned on for a single script. The most common use of this module will be simply: use Win32::VisualStyles; in a script, or: perl -MWin32::VisualStyles somescript.pl from the command line. The module also provides access to some related Win32 APIs for managing styles - please see the POD documentation with the module for more information. INSTALLING Please see the INSTALLING file, supplied with the distribution. SEEING IT IN ACTION If you have the Win32::GUI module available then there is a script, themes.pl, provided in the scripts directory of the distribution that you can run to see the effect of the various API calls. Otherwise try these one-liners: C:\>perl -MWin32 -e"Win32::MsgBox(q(Some Message))" C:\>perl -MWin32 -MWin32::VisualStyles -e"Win32::MsgBox(q(Some Message))" AUTHOR Robert May