>>
>>You can have nice modern look without messing up with GDI+. Just play with colors, test various foreground textboxes on top
>>of some nice background colors, add some rounded shapes to your backgrounds and you will be very soon away from 'batleship' color scheme that many associate VFP apps with.
>>
>>People had beautifully looking apps back in VFP5. Few years back I was totally impressed by design of VFP app written by a kid absolute beginner. Did not look at internals but from graphic design standpoint it was fantastic. Mind you it was VFP6!
>>So it is just matter of imagination and a bit of touch for visual design. APP can look nice in more or less any language.
>>
>>You can purchase or even download for free very nice sets of icons, download few free interface goodies from VFPx like ThemedControls! or Gradient class by Cesar and few other things elsewhere (chk Foxite as well) and then it is all in your good hands :)
>>This more or less what I have done. (See picture)
>>
>>Good luck :)
>
>No Srdjan. While the colors are nice, this is by no means what I would call a 'modern' UI. It looks like a mid-90's UI typical of what VFP apps of that day typically look like.

Yes Rick :)
This more modern VFP interface then the 'battleship-gray' AND less then latest-latest interface trends. However this is my in-house apps stuff. Did not really spend hundreds of hours to polish interfaces but just changed fonts added some colors, changed buttons etc. Which is more or less what OP asked for.

As far as choice of controls it is matter of personal preferences and what everyone app is supposed to do. If I write accounting or booking system where fast keyboard entries are must, then I want list complex controls where entries flow fast and easy into the system. Whereas if one is to write BI app for fortune 500 stocks trading company, where bunch of high-level users will be clicking looking and printing more then actually typing, then interface would have been by all means infested with shiny ActiveX, stylish 3rd party grid controls, graphs and what not. It all depends on purpose and nature of applications and what goals are to be achieved.

On the other hand who says that Windows interface is God's given bible/book of how interface is supposed to look and feel ?
There are many cases where Windows/Office interfaces are just plain annoying! I agree that W7 makes many established apps
look a bit outdated with transparency and all those new trends, but who says that I (or anyone else for that matter) need to
immediately comply with all that? M$ spits out OS with new interface trends every few years due to their business model.
Many VFP shops and established VFP developers have applications implemented and in production for DECADES (which is OUR business model!) and simply cannot afford to (and they should not!) change look and feel of their apps every few years.

So if you ask me, adding some colors and making it look a bit 'more modern', while keeping application stable and reliable is just fine.
But that is just me, I am just weird that way {g}

Cheers :)