[DUG] XP / Vista Themes

[Rohit Gupta]

I havent attacked this problem yet as there many more I have to sort 
out.   For example if a control is moved after creation, it tends to not 
show.  I did expect to have to put a panel on the tabs so that the 
colours would match the rest of the panels.  Since we always used 
descended components, its not much of a hassle to fix.

John Bird wrote:
> This interests me too - there are a number of components where there are no
> properties to control the background colour etc.  The XP manifest turns page
> controls to a white background.   Personally I fiddled then just gave in and
> used it as is - so now my page controls are white.  
>
> There is a lot that can be done with careful matching of colours in the
> standard VCL - here are a couple I use:
>
> 1 - I have a list box where I turn the border off and set the background
> colour to clBtnFace - it gives a neat area of the screen with no borders
> that can scroll (The scroll bar still shows -it's the only cue that the area
> can be scrolled).
>
> 	Listbox1.borderstyle:=bsNone;
> 	listbox1.color:=clBtnFace;
>
>
> 2 - Another trick is having a page control under program control - hiding
> the borders and tabs and changing the current tab programmatically, for
> instance with a menu or button click, which gives multiple layouts on the
> same form.
>
> procedure TForm1.HideTabsInPageCtrl;
> Var
> iPage: Integer;
> begin
>   // hide the tabs
>   for iPage := 0 to PageControl1.PageCount - 1 do
>     PageControl1.Pages[iPage].TabVisible := False;
>   // set the active tabsheet
>   if (PageControl1.PageCount > 0) then
>     PageControl1.ActivePage := PageControl1.Pages[0];		//this can
> be altered later in the program
>   // hide the border of the pagecontrol
>   PageControl1.Style := tsButtons;
> end;
>
> This also does put the page control back into clBtnFace - I haven't found
> another way yet :)
>
>
> 3 - TButton   This standard control I am surprised at how little there is to
> alter - I have a version from Delphi About.Com (ColorButton) that I modified
> further to give full control over text and background colour on a button,
> with optional changes in both when the mouse goes over the button.  I also
> added a split level background colour, so that the lower half is
> automatically drawn a bit darker than the top half on mouse-over - this is
> similar to how tabs and buttons are rendered in lots of software these days,
> eg look at the Firefox and IE7 tabs.  Also optionally the text font gets
> bolded on Mouse over.  I think this is quite like the trend in Vista etc
> where effectively buttons are becoming quite large (eg in the new dialogs
> with a large amount of text in them), and often do reflect a change in
> appearance on mouse over...I had this working on D5 and D2006 so I suspect
> it's a component that will travel easily to later versions too...  The
> standard Tbutton does show some (olive) highlighting with the XP manifest on
> mouse-over, but still has no control over background colour so I use both.
> Happy to share it - especially if anyone improves on it further.
>
> John
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
> Behalf Of Robert martin
> Sent: Friday, 13 April 2007 4:29 p.m.
> To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
> Subject: [DUG] XP / Vista Themes
>
>
> Hi all
>
> Just playing with themes and notice that where we have edit combos 
> placed on Tab pages the colour is different.  We had set the colour of 
> some as clBtnFace so that their background colour was the same as the 
> form/ groupbox/ panel/ tab page they were on.  However with themes 
> enabled pagecontrols are using a different colour to clBtnFace.
>
> How do I set them to the same colour as the component they are on?  
> .ParentColor seems to get the forms colour / not the pageControls and 
> the page control does not have a colour property.
>
> Any suggestions ?
>
>
>   

-- 
*Rohit Gupta*
* B.E. Elec.   M.E.   Mem IEEE    Associate IEE*
*Technical Manager*
*Computer Fanatics Limited*
** 
*Tel*     +64 9 4892280
*Fax*    +64 9 4892290
*Email  *rohit at cfl.co.nz <mailto:rohit at cfl.co.nz>**
*Web    *www.cfl.co.nz <http://www.cfl.co.nz/>
 
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