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DevExpress v24.2 Update — Your Feedback Matters

Our What's New in v24.2 webpage includes product-specific surveys. Your response to our survey questions will help us measure product satisfaction for features released in this major update and help us refine our plans for our next major release.

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Design-Time Skinning

At design time, all DevExpress controls are painted with the default “DevExpress Style” skin - unless you use the DefaultLookAndFeel component to apply a specific skin.

Skins - Default DesignTime Skin

In the Visual Studio “DevExpress | WinForms Controls” menu, click “Change Design-Time Settings…” to change the default design-time skin. In the invoked dialog, choose the required skin and check “Enable design-time form skinning”.

DevExpress Menu - Design-Time Settings Dialog

This setting changes the DefaultDesignTimeLookAndFeel registry key, located under the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Developer Express” node (the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Developer Express” node for 64-bit Windows). The selected skin will be applied to all WinForms projects that are not explicitly set by the DefaultLookAndFeel component.

Skins - Custom DesignTime Skin

Note

  1. If a WinForms project is open when you change the default design-time skin, restart Visual Studio to apply the changes.

  2. This setting does not affect runtime application appearance; at runtime, the “DevExpress Style” skin will still be applied by default.