Theme-Compliant Colors and Patterns

The colors used for interface elements may vary from theme to theme. If you are using standard interface elements (that is, system-defined windows, controls, and menus), the colors used for these elements automatically change with a theme change.

Some programs may not use standard interface elements in all instances, however. In such cases, to ensure that your interface elements coordinate with the current theme, you should use the Appearance Manager to determine the colors (and patterns) that your program uses. See Using Theme-Compliant Colors and Patterns for more details on this process.

To be theme-compliant, you should not use any set values for the colors of interface objects in your program. For example, compare the background colors of the two dialog boxes shown in Figure 2-8 . The non-theme-compliant dialog box uses a set background color of white, which contrasts with the theme-compliant dialog box, whose background color is automatically drawn in gray, the correct color for the current theme.

The Appearance Manager provides the following functions for setting the foreground or background of the current graphics port:

ApplyThemeBackground sets the background color or pattern of the current port to be consistent with that of an embedding object.
SetThemeBackground applies a theme-compliant color or pattern to the background of the current port.
SetThemePen applies a theme-compliant color or pattern to the foreground of the current port.

The Appearance Manager provides the following functions for working with text colors:

GetThemeTextColor obtains the text color used for a specified element under the current theme.
SetThemeTextColor sets the current text color to be consistent with that of a specified element.

The Appearance Manager provides the following functions for obtaining theme color information:

GetThemeAccentColors obtains a copy of a theme's accent colors.
GetThemeBrushAsColor obtains the color that corresponds to a given theme brush type under the current theme.
IsThemeInColor returns whether the current theme would draw in color in the given environment.

The Appearance Manager provides the following functions for working with the drawing state of the current graphics port:

GetThemeDrawingState obtains the drawing state of the current graphics port.
SetThemeDrawingState sets the drawing state of the current graphics port.
DisposeThemeDrawingState releases the memory associated with a reference to a graphics port's drawing state.
NormalizeThemeDrawingState sets the current graphics port to a default drawing state.