Executable Buttons Not Displaying - vb.net

I created a VB.Net application with a target .NET Framework of 4.5. The application runs fine on my computer (or any system with Visual Studio installed). But when I try to run the exe generated from the build, the application loads, but the buttons are not displaying. There is an outline where the button is, and you can actually click the button to perform the action just fine. I assume this has something to do with a reference problem, but I really don't know for sure. They are just standard Windows form buttons. No images attached.

So I figured out the solution, but not necessarily the problem. The button had a BackColor property set to Black which is the same color as the form. For some reason, on certain machines this caused the button and the form to blend together. Changing the button BackColor to something different (such as Control grey) worked just fine.

Related

Windows Form renders unevenly in designer

I have a Windows Form that, for some reason, has changed in looks. Even though no UI changes have been made, certain controls look smaller and some controls, such as the Text in a GroupBox wraps when the app is run. However, when I run the app on other workstations, it looks fine. I don't understand what would cause this unless there were Microsoft updates. Any ideas?
I have attached 2 screenshots, one in the designer mode and the other in execution mode.
Execution Mode
Thanks,
Looks like you didn't design your app with a DPI aware state. Try redesigning it in UWP instead of WFP as UWP is automatically DPI aware.
Also the button that disappears on the right side that says finish, try making sure the Button.visible property is not set to false.

VS 2010 Windows Form App - One Form has a different visual style - why?

I am building my first "real" VB Window Forms Application (I'm a "traditional programmer") and my application has perhaps half a dozen forms.
On execution all of these forms have the Windows 10 visual style (eg: grey on white max/min/close buttons at top right)... except for 1 form, which seems to be rendering in Win XP style (eg: Blue and red button style).
I have checked that "Enable XP Visual Styles" is UNClicked in the Project Properties, but this one form stubbornly refused to change.
I have a number of my forms that also appear in "XP style" in the VS Designer, but execute fine.
I suspect I may have enabled/disabled the "XP Visual Styles" option a couple of times, and perhaps initially created some forms when this was in different states... although I have no idea if this would have been the cause.
I really want this one form to be like all the others...
any ideas please? I am using VB in VS2010 (a bit old, but what I have to hand)
As I am quite new to VB so tell me what I can provide to help..
Many thanks,
David's comment has solved my immediate issue:
The single form appearing differently is indeed using Show() whereas the others are all ShowDialog(). There is no reason for me doing this, so I have changed it.

Windows Forms form doesn't look native

I've added a Windows Forms form to a VB.net application, and I'm showing it with the usual:
Dim form As New FormInsCapiLettore()
form.ShowDialog()
The problem is that the form, when shown, has an incredibly ugly "windows 95" style. Basically the system theme (Windows 10 in my case) does not get applied. The result is in the screenshot below:
As you can see, not only does it look ugly and non-native, but the layout also screws up: notice the TextBox spilling outside the "input" GroupBox and the "Fine" Button not filling the vertical space.
Notice that the form looks absolutely fine in the Visual Studio designer, with the native look! But when launched, the form has no theme and looks like the screenshot.
Any clues? Additional info:
Running Windows 10 x64
Visual Studio 2015
Application compiled against .NET 4.0
You need to call Application.EnableVisualStyles().

Resources causing transparent and erratic window behavior VB.net 2012

I'm not entirely sure what caused this, but just prior I had deleted an image that was set as a tab panels background image which caused some crashing of vb studio when opening anything to do with the project resources. I removed the image, then re-added it and everything seemed okay.
Now, no mater what I do i get all sorts of funky draw issues at runtime with my project; such as transparent text boxes in child forms (and if they are called not as a MDI child) and weird stuff such as clicks on the taskbar registering on windows behind.
Visual studio has also crashed a few times, especially when doing anything to do with the project resources.
Example Problem
Any one have idea what may be causing this? It seems to be related to the project resources or possibly tab panels.
(Visual Studio 2012 & Windows 10)
Just in case somebody finds this Question after all this time. I had the same Problem and i found, that the Transparency-Key of my form was set to White, so everything White became transparent (Textboxes, colored Labels, etc.). After deleting that, everything worked fine.
I use Visual Studio 2013, don't know if this doesn't work in the 2012 Version.

How to resolve Windows Forms designer issue - controls move on debug?

Is there a reason / fix for this weird designer issue (at least, I think it's related to the designer), whereby the controls on the form do not appear as they do in the design window when I debug the application..!
Please see the following two screenshots to demonstrate the problem (note: I have blacked out some of the content of the form, this is not the problem):
Picture 1: Showing how the form appears in the designer view
Picture 2: Showing how the form appears in debug mode
You can clearly see that some of the buttons have moved position on the form.
Note: At first glance, this may appear like a duplicate of: Windows Forms Designer destroys form layout. However, I have not installed any additional tools or components. This is simply a standard "vanilla" build of Visual Studio 2012 on Windows 7 32-bit.
I've also come across this question: UI Controls Overlapping & Fonts Issue in Windows Forms Application. However, I am not using "large fonts", nor am I using any non-standard fonts on my controls (all label and button text is left as default). Still, I can see how this would affect the control positions and will do some more checks in this area.
There's nothing happening within the form's Load method.
I'm also using TFS 2012.
What could be causing this? Is there anything I can do to fix it?
EDIT: I've removed the font property for each label and button control, allowing the system to set the default value. Still no change. Interestingly, if I open the form in design mode, then save it, then close it, then open it again, the buttons have moved... If I do this a few times, the buttons migrate until they're off the form.
OK, I've found the answer, after a bit more fiddling. It seems to be related to the Anchor property on the controls. I made a bunch of changes, testing between each change to see if there was any difference. When I selected all the controls and set the Anchor property to Top, Left, this solved the issue.
I hope this helps someone else at some point!