Enabling Visual Styles

When you use Windows Forms dialogs and windows, you may have noticed that they show differently, depending on whether you launched your script from within the ISE editor or from the powershell.exe console.

This is because the ISE editor enables visual styles by default. The console falls back to standard appearance.

Enabling Visual Styles in PowerShell Console

To enable visual styles in the PowerShell console as well, add this line to your code:

[System.Windows.Forms.Application]::EnableVisualStyles()

In a previous tip, we explained how to create a simple custom dialog using Windows Forms. Here’s a sample that includes enabling visual styles, so the dialog window now looks the same regardless from which host you have launched the code:

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Drawing

# enable rich visual styles in PowerShell console mode:
[System.Windows.Forms.Application]::EnableVisualStyles()

$form1 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form
$button2 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Button
$button1 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Button

$System_Drawing_Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size
$System_Drawing_Size.Width = 256
$System_Drawing_Size.Height = 44
$form1.ClientSize = $System_Drawing_Size
$form1.FormBorderStyle = 3
$form1.TopMost = $True
$form1.Text = "Your Choice"
$form1.ControlBox = $False
$form1.StartPosition = 1

$System_Drawing_Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size
$System_Drawing_Size.Width = 75
$System_Drawing_Size.Height = 23
$button2.Size = $System_Drawing_Size
$button2.UseVisualStyleBackColor = $True
$button2.Text = "Don''t do it"
$System_Drawing_Point = New-Object System.Drawing.Point
$System_Drawing_Point.X = 174
$System_Drawing_Point.Y = 12
$button2.Location = $System_Drawing_Point
$button2.DialogResult = 2

$System_Drawing_Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size
$System_Drawing_Size.Width = 75
$System_Drawing_Size.Height = 23
$button1.Size = $System_Drawing_Size
$button1.UseVisualStyleBackColor = $True
$button1.Text = "Do it"

$System_Drawing_Point = New-Object System.Drawing.Point
$System_Drawing_Point.X = 92
$System_Drawing_Point.Y = 12
$button1.Location = $System_Drawing_Point
$button1.DataBindings.DefaultDataSourceUpdateMode = 0
$button1.DialogResult = 1

$form1.Controls.Add($button2)
$form1.Controls.Add($button1)

$form1.ShowDialog()

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