Give .NET Windows Forms the MFC 7 look with the Tahoma font as default by Justin Smith

Hi Justin.
Thank you for your suggestion. We will consider this and get back to you with our decision.

As an update to this suggestion, I’ve created an example program that demonstrates exactly what I am talking about. Now you can clearly see with a side by side comparison how much better MFC 7 style controls look, and how they desperately need to be added to .NET 2.0 Windows Forms for superior visual quality. You can download the demonstration program at http://justin-files.net/MFC7.zip. You need to have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed to run it.

Unfortunately we cannot completely address this issue in the Whidbey timeframe but will do so in a future release. Having said that we are doing the ground work to address this issue. We have a SystemFonts class that will expose DefaultFont (the default font we use today) and DialogFont ("MS Shell Dlg2" which is actually Tahoma 8pt). You should see this in Beta2. In Whidbey we won't be exposing a simple way to set this at design time. You will be able to use this at runtime in a pretty straight-forward manner. In the constructor simply add:

    this.Font = SystemFonts.DialogFont;
    InitializeComponent();

Coupled with the changes we are making to improve our autoscaling behavior this will work well. If you want design time support you can create a base form class that does this and then derive your form's from this base class.

Its worth noting you can do this today using V1.x - something like:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Microsoft.Win32;

namespace FontForm {
    public class DialogForm : Form {
        public DialogForm() {
            SystemEvents.UserPreferenceChanged
                 += new UserPreferenceChangedEventHandler(SystemEvents_UserPreferenceChanged);
            this.Font = SystemInformation.MenuFont;
        }

        private void SystemEvents_UserPreferenceChanged(object sender,
                                                        UserPreferenceChangedEventArgs e) {
            if (e.Category == UserPreferenceCategory.Window) { //Is this narrowing correct?
                this.Font = SystemInformation.MenuFont;
                this.ApplyAutoScaling();
            }
        }

        protected override void Dispose(bool disposing) {
            if (disposing) {
                SystemEvents.UserPreferenceChanged
                 -= new UserPreferenceChangedEventHandler(SystemEvents_UserPreferenceChanged);
            }
            base.Dispose(disposing);
        }

    }
}

I've included a whole set of notes and background information below that will hopefully help you understand our current font processing and the new dialog font.

mark

Some more background information on this:

GetStockObject
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/gdi/devcons_1t10.asp

Localization and the Shell Font
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/intl/nls_2np0.asp

MS Shell Dlg and MS Shell Dlg2
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/intl/nls_4qcn.asp

Windows Forms Default Font property
==
Control has a static DefaultFont property that returns the font that Windows Forms applications use.

DefaultFont has the following logic:

    If DefaultFont is not null return

    If on WinNT 4x platform and LCID=JAPAN use "MS UI Gothic", 9pt

    If on Arabic platform use “Tahoma”, 8pt

    Else use GetStockObject(DEFAULT_GUI_FONT)

    If this fails use "Tahoma", 8pt

    Finally fall back to GDI+ FontFamily.GenericSansSerif, 8pt

GetStockObject(DEFAULT_GUI_FONT) returns the logical font “MS Shell Dlg”.

This is then mapped to an actual font – typi

Thanks Microsoft. It’s good to know you’re working on it for a future release. Perhaps in Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 you can make “MS Shell Dlg2” the default font and accessible within the Visual Studio GUI, as it is the best looking font selection available.

This is still not fixed in VS 2008 (Beta 2). Come on, how long is it going to take you to fix this simple UI issue?

Also note the "new" suggested font is Segoe UI. Now VS has to decide which font to use.

Microsoft, This issue if completed could have cascade effects such as solving issues like https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=522986 and anything concerning font problems when the font can be quickly easily and smoothly changed program wide with a single change of a sentance.

Please fix this issue.

I used the following code in the wizard dialog I wrote to change the default font to Tahoma. You should be able to create your own inherited form or control class that you can reuse.

// NOTE: This code is posted "AS-IS" with no warrenty, implied or otherwise!
// Sorry about the horrible formatting - the feedback center did that...

private bool _FontSet = false;
private static Font _DefaultFont = null;

/// <summary>
/// This member overrides <see cref="Control.Font"/>.
/// </summary>
public override Font Font
{
    get
    {
        if (_FontSet)
            return base.Font;
        else
            return DefaultFont;
    }
    set
    {
        // Determine if we will need to raise the FontChanged event.
        // We will need to raise the event manually if the "base" Font is
        // equal to the specified value and the font has not been set.
        bool raiseChangedEvent = false;
        if ((!_FontSet) && (base.Font == value))
            raiseChangedEvent = true;

        // Change the Font property
        _FontSet = true;
        base.Font = value;

        if (raiseChangedEvent)
            OnFontChanged(EventArgs.Empty);
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Indicates whether the <see cref="Control.Font">Font</see> property should be persisted.
/// </summary>
/// <returns><see langword="true"/> if the property value has changed from its default; otherwise, <see langword="false"/>.</returns>
private bool ShouldSerializeFont()
{
    if (_FontSet)
        return true;
    else
        return false;
}

/// <summary>
/// This member overrides <see cref="Control.ResetFont"/>.
/// </summary>
public override void ResetFont()
{
    if (_FontSet)
    {
        _FontSet = false;
        OnFontChanged(EventArgs.Empty);
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Gets the default font of the control.
/// </summary>
/// <value>The default <see cref="Font"/> of the control. The default is the dialog font currently in use by the user's operating system.</value>
public static new Font DefaultFont
{
    get
    {
        if (_DefaultFont == null)
        {
            if ((Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.Win32NT) &&
                (Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major >= 5))
            {
                // Use special 'MS Shell Dlg 2' font on Win2000+ platforms.
                _DefaultFont = new Font("MS Shell Dlg 2", Control.DefaultFont.Size);
            }
            else
            {
                // Use special 'MS Shell Dlg' font on all other platforms.
                _DefaultFont = new Font("MS Shell Dlg", Control.DefaultFont.Size);
            }
        }
        return _DefaultFont;
    }
}