Another neat feature of Resource Tuner is its ability to generate a so-called application manifest. This is a recently-introduced extension to Microsoft's common controls library, which enables an application to make use of the visual styles found in Windows XP and Vista.

The application manifests have received an upgrade in Windows Vista to allow them to express the application's requested security context.

If you want to make an application visual-style savvy and you don't have the source code, you normally have to place a specially-named file in the same directory as the executable. Resource Tuner provides a better solution by enabling you to inject the needed resource directly into the EXE file in just a few clicks.

Resource Tuner adds in a manifest file into a manifest resource within the resource section of the EXE file.

The Manifest Wizard is very easy to use — just follow the instructions and fill in the blanks accordingly.

Here is how the common controls for an ordinary application look on Windows XP:

And now you could easily convert your Delphi, Visual Basic, Visual C, etc. application into a Windows XP like application in just a few clicks. Here is how that same application appears after a manifest has been inserted:

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