Windows 7 Taskforce

Improve and USE the standard toolbar control

Submitted by Calum.Cook on May 15, 2009 to Aesthetics, Annoyance, Legacy

Problem: Everyone complains about how every command bar in Windows 7/Windows Live is different - I do too. It doesn't help that the standard toolbar control is completely unsuited to making consistent UIs. For example, if you were making an application that had to have the style of Windows 7's Explorer, here's what you would have to do:

1: Make a rectangle where the toolbar is going to be
2: Give it the light blue background image (and add different versions of it for at least 96, 120, and 144 DPI settings)
3: Place the toolbar buttons
4: Give each toolbar button the hover and pressed style images (again, create different resources for the standard DPI settings)
5: Make the text on the toolbar blue, and good luck finding the exact shade of blue, because from what I know it isn't documented anywhere
6: Create a whole custom overflow mechanism for when the window is too narrow to show all the toolbar commands
7: Of course, you have to support Classic mode as well, so add a whole other set of images to deal with that
8: What if you want your application to fit in with the style of the OS it's running on? Add another set of XP-style images, another set of Vista-style images, maybe 2000/9x, and find a way of updating your application to whatever new visual style Microsoft devises for future Windows versions.

Image attachment, from left to right:
Explorer, Media Player, Live Photo Gallery, Live Mail, IE

Solution: With all this effort, it's easy to see why third party developers simply do not bother to conform to Windows UI styles. The standard toolbar control comes with a grey background and does not fit in with the Windows 7 UI style. So, Microsoft spends time creating a custom command bar for every single application they make so that applications can look the same! What an irony. Of course, little inconsistencies in behaviour and appearance always creep in.

Microsoft should update the standard toolbar control so that it automatically gets whatever visual style the OS is using, the USE it across all their applications. That means Microsoft can change one set of resources for the toolbar background colour, text colour, icons on or off, and the hover/pressed styles or whatever, and every single app that uses the standard toolbar, both from Microsoft and third parties, will just look like the OS it's running on. Brilliant.

Severity: Medium

Impact: Medium

Status: Not fixed

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