Classic / XP theme

[Mark Rae]

Hi,

I'm writing a WinForms app in C# and would like to alter the button images
on the toolbar depending on whether the user is using the WinXP theme or the
Classic theme. Changing the image list is the easy bit, but does anyone have
any code for detecting which theme is currently in use?

Any assistance gratefully recevied.

Best regards,

Mark Rae

 

[Donald Smith]

Hey Mark,

I did a search in Google and found this:
http://codeproject.com/csharp/xptheme.asp

Hope this helps

-Donald

 

[Mark Rae]

Hey Mark,

I did a search in Google and found this:
http://codeproject.com/csharp/xptheme.asp

Hope this helps

Wow! It's as easy as checking a single Registry setting...!

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager
ThemeActive is "1" if Windows XP, "0" if Windows Classic.

Thanks very much!

Mark

 

[Mark Rae]

Further to this, does anyone know of any way to make the standard VS.NET
Menu control look more attractive when running under one of the XP themes?
E.g.

1. Menubar and "classic" toolbar running on Windows Classic theme:
http://www.markrae.myby.co.uk/ClassicClassic.jpg

2. Menubar and "XP" toolbar running on Windows Classic theme:
http://www.markrae.myby.co.uk/ClassicXP.jpg

3. Menubar and "XP" toolbar running on Windows XP theme:
http://www.markrae.myby.co.uk/XPXP.jpg

With option 3, the menu backgrounds are clearly visible, which looks awful.
I had a similar problem with toolbars but was able to get round this by
setting the TransparentColor property of the toolbar's underlying ImageList
to the same as the toolbar itself i.e. Silver (192,192,192) - there seems to
be no way of doing this for menu controls.