I don't want to sound like a live-free-or-die-hard FOSS fanboy (even though I am), but, you could always use an open toolkit like Qt or GTK. They're ubiquitous,

I don't want to sound like a live-free-or-die-hard FOSS fanboy (even though I am), but, you could always use an open toolkit like Qt or GTK. They're ubiquitous, and especially in Qt's case, totally customisable in terms of look & feel. Microsoft can't perform any cathedral-style deprecation (cannibalization) to these toolkits.