So I think the WinForms editor thing occurs because of how windows are drawn rather than something related to Visual Studio itself. (You could see this more easily on Windows XP or whatever where if you decided to change from Luna to Olive or what have you, the WinForms designer form would change as well.)
I think it's probably an artifact of drawing the window in a particular way using the Win32 API.
For example, you can also see the "Aero Basic" style if you do a Control.DrawToBitmap on a Form control. (According to the winforms source, `DrawToBitmap` just sends a WM_PRINT message.)
I am actually mildly surprised it didn't change in Windows 10, but maybe that part of the codebase never got updated. Who knows :)
(Side note: there's also this article[1] from 2004 that describes creating your own custom "designer" type application. It's pretty old, but it might be interesting nontheless.)
Supporting your point: if you set Form.TopLevel to false and then add the form as a control to another form, it'll be drawn in the "Aero Basic" style there, too.
I think it's probably an artifact of drawing the window in a particular way using the Win32 API.
For example, you can also see the "Aero Basic" style if you do a Control.DrawToBitmap on a Form control. (According to the winforms source, `DrawToBitmap` just sends a WM_PRINT message.)
I am actually mildly surprised it didn't change in Windows 10, but maybe that part of the codebase never got updated. Who knows :)
(Side note: there's also this article[1] from 2004 that describes creating your own custom "designer" type application. It's pretty old, but it might be interesting nontheless.)
[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2004...