Stuck with Visual Studio 6 (or older) but want your application to have that fancy Windows XP Look and Feel when run ? This can easily be done by adding a manifest file in the same directory as the program, but that means you have one more file to take care of while distribute your application.

This is where "Insert Manifest" comes to play. It's a very simple command line program which adds a manifest file to an application executable as resource.

The usage is pretty straight forward:

InsManifest <path_to_exe_file> <path_to_manifest_file>

Of course you'll have to create your manifest file before using the program but that's a very easy task. You can simply modify the following template manifest:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> 
<assembly 
   xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" 
   manifestVersion="1.0">
	<assemblyIdentity 
    processorArchitecture="x86" 
    version="5.1.0.0"
    type="win32"
    name="YourExeName.Exe"/>
    <description>
        Your application name goes here
    </description>
    <dependency>
    <dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity
         type="win32"
         name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
         version="6.0.0.0"
         publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
         language="*"
         processorArchitecture="x86"/>
    </dependentAssembly>
    </dependency>
</assembly>