- Why support XP themes?
- What is the situation with Windows XP Themes in Delphi, C++Builder, CLX?
- What does LMD ElPack offer?
- Support for XP themes in other versions of Windows
Why support XP themes?
Starting with Windows XP Microsoft provides visual styles, often called "themes". In fact, there are 2 themes in Windows XP installation -- "Windows classic" and "Windows XP". "Windows XP" theme has several styles (Default Blue, Olive Green and Silver). There are many themes and styles currently available for download from third-party sources.
If the user has enabled Theme support in his Windows XP system, your application will look outdated and unusual (if not ugly), if you don't provide correct and complete XP themes support.
What is the situation with Windows XP Themes in Delphi, C++Builder, CLX?
Until Delphi 7 there is no support for Windows XP Themes in Delphi/C++Builder. There is no support for XP Themes in CLX applications at all. You can add so-called Manifest (it can be found on the net or on Microsoft site) to your application and standard controls will look more or less correctly. However all custom-drawn controls including VCL's TGroupBox, TLabel, TTabSheet, TSpeedButton will still be old-styled. Things are even worse if you use third-party controls which draw themselves.
What does LMD ElPack offer?
LMD ElPack provides complete support for XP themes in your Delphi, C++Builder and Kylix application. What does this mean?
First of all, manifest is included automatically when you use any LMD ElPack control. This ensures that window borders and standard controls are drawn correctly.
Second benefit is that LMD ElPack controls take XP themes into account and draw themselves correctly (using Windows XP Theme API) when XP themes are enabled.
Third, you can tweak form caption and still make it have new XP-themed look. This is not the case for other components that change form caption. ElFormCaption component lets you add additional buttons to the caption and make caption text Unicode (and have different fonts/styles/colors).
And the last but not the least - LMD ElPack controls in CLX also support XP themes! This feature is not available in standard CLX controls and it is not likely that it will ever be.
Use of XP Theme support in LMD ElPack is optional and can be disabled in two steps: first you need to use conditional define in source code to disable manifest inclusion and then you need to set a variable ThemesAvailable in ElUxTheme.pas to false in the body of your application (before Application.Initialize call).
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