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How to accurately detect if an application is theme-enabled?

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1 Jun 20051 min read 87K   28   15
Describes a function that overcomes the inadequacies of IsAppThemed and IsThemeActive.

Image 1

Fig. 1 : System wide and app-specific themes enabled

Image 2

Fig. 2 : System wide themes enabled, app-specific themes disabled

Image 3

Fig. 3 : System wide themes disabled. (App-specific doesn't matter)

Overview

When you develop custom controls that work differently depending on whether the application has themes enabled or not, you need to detect whether the currently running application is using themes or not. MSDN lists two functions IsAppThemed and IsThemeActive and I list below snippets from their documentation :-

IsAppThemed Function - Reports whether the current application's user interface displays using visual styles.
IsThemeActive Function - Tests if a visual style for the current application is active.

You'd think that all you need to do is to use one or both of these functions, wouldn't you? Guess what? On XP (even SP2) both these functions return

TRUE
if your system wide themes setting is enabled. Thus any system that's using an XP styled theme will always have these two functions returning TRUE.

I googled around and didn't find anything worthwhile. I saw a posting from Jeff Partch (MVP) who suggested calling GetModuleHandle on comctl32.dll and comparing this module handle with the handle returned by calling GetClassLongPtr on a known control handle with the

GCLP_HMODULE
flag. While I didn't actually try that out, I thought it'd be easier to call DllGetVersion on comctl32.dll and check if the version is 6 or greater.

The IsThemed function

The code lavishly uses LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress to avoid a dependency on the PSDK (the code now compiles on the default installation of VC++ 6).

#pragma once

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <Shlwapi.h>

BOOL IsThemed()
{
    BOOL ret = FALSE;
    OSVERSIONINFO ovi = {0};
    ovi.dwOSVersionInfoSize = sizeof ovi;
    GetVersionEx(&ovi);
    if(ovi.dwMajorVersion==5 && ovi.dwMinorVersion==1)
    {
        //Windows XP detected
        typedef BOOL WINAPI ISAPPTHEMED();
        typedef BOOL WINAPI ISTHEMEACTIVE();
        ISAPPTHEMED* pISAPPTHEMED = NULL;
        ISTHEMEACTIVE* pISTHEMEACTIVE = NULL;
        HMODULE hMod = LoadLibrary(_T("uxtheme.dll"));
        if(hMod)
        {
            pISAPPTHEMED = reinterpret_cast<ISAPPTHEMED*>(
                GetProcAddress(hMod,_T("IsAppThemed")));
            pISTHEMEACTIVE = reinterpret_cast<ISTHEMEACTIVE*>(
                GetProcAddress(hMod,_T("IsThemeActive")));
            if(pISAPPTHEMED && pISTHEMEACTIVE)
            {
                if(pISAPPTHEMED() && pISTHEMEACTIVE())                
                {                
                    typedef HRESULT CALLBACK DLLGETVERSION(DLLVERSIONINFO*);
                    DLLGETVERSION* pDLLGETVERSION = NULL;

                    HMODULE hModComCtl = LoadLibrary(_T("comctl32.dll"));
                    if(hModComCtl)
                    {
                        pDLLGETVERSION = reinterpret_cast<DLLGETVERSION*>(
                            GetProcAddress(hModComCtl,_T("DllGetVersion")));
                        if(pDLLGETVERSION)
                        {
                            DLLVERSIONINFO dvi = {0};
                            dvi.cbSize = sizeof dvi;
                            if(pDLLGETVERSION(&dvi) == NOERROR )
                            {
                                ret = dvi.dwMajorVersion >= 6;
                            }
                        }
                        FreeLibrary(hModComCtl);                    
                    }
                }
            }
            FreeLibrary(hMod);
        }
    }    
    return ret;
}

Using the code

if(IsThemed())
    m_bThemed = true;
else
    m_bThemed = false;

History

  • June 02, 2005 - Article first published

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

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Written By
United States United States
Nish Nishant is a technology enthusiast from Columbus, Ohio. He has over 20 years of software industry experience in various roles including Chief Technology Officer, Senior Solution Architect, Lead Software Architect, Principal Software Engineer, and Engineering/Architecture Team Leader. Nish is a 14-time recipient of the Microsoft Visual C++ MVP Award.

Nish authored C++/CLI in Action for Manning Publications in 2005, and co-authored Extending MFC Applications with the .NET Framework for Addison Wesley in 2003. In addition, he has over 140 published technology articles on CodeProject.com and another 250+ blog articles on his WordPress blog. Nish is experienced in technology leadership, solution architecture, software architecture, cloud development (AWS and Azure), REST services, software engineering best practices, CI/CD, mentoring, and directing all stages of software development.

Nish's Technology Blog : voidnish.wordpress.com

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionIs there a reason to check IsAppThemed / IsThemeActive first? Pin
peterchen24-Mar-09 7:11
peterchen24-Mar-09 7:11 
GeneralSuggestion: No need to check comctl32.dll version Pin
Sumit Kapoor2-Aug-06 20:38
Sumit Kapoor2-Aug-06 20:38 
GeneralRe: Suggestion: No need to check comctl32.dll version Pin
Anil K P10-Jun-07 23:54
Anil K P10-Jun-07 23:54 
GeneralRe: Suggestion: No need to check comctl32.dll version Pin
Keith Worden17-Jul-08 2:40
Keith Worden17-Jul-08 2:40 
GeneralUnicode Pin
Warren Stevens13-Nov-05 2:34
Warren Stevens13-Nov-05 2:34 
GeneralRe: Unicode Pin
Nish Nishant13-Nov-05 2:38
sitebuilderNish Nishant13-Nov-05 2:38 
GeneralMaking code Vista (or later) friendly Pin
Warren Stevens11-Nov-05 7:21
Warren Stevens11-Nov-05 7:21 
GeneralRe: Making code Vista (or later) friendly Pin
Yongchun8-Jan-06 0:28
Yongchun8-Jan-06 0:28 
GeneralRe: Making code Vista (or later) friendly Pin
Warren Stevens11-Jan-06 5:21
Warren Stevens11-Jan-06 5:21 
GeneralRe: Making code Vista (or later) friendly Pin
Keith Worden17-Jul-08 2:37
Keith Worden17-Jul-08 2:37 
GeneralRe: Making code Vista (or later) friendly Pin
Warren Stevens17-Jul-08 17:21
Warren Stevens17-Jul-08 17:21 
GeneralRe: Making code Vista (or later) friendly Pin
Keith Worden18-Jul-08 0:11
Keith Worden18-Jul-08 0:11 
GeneralIsAppThemed returns FALSE for a Windows XP (Modified) theme Pin
Brian KS6-Oct-05 6:52
sussBrian KS6-Oct-05 6:52 
Questionxp+ ? Pin
Huisheng Chen2-Jun-05 2:51
Huisheng Chen2-Jun-05 2:51 
AnswerRe: xp+ ? Pin
Nish Nishant2-Jun-05 5:42
sitebuilderNish Nishant2-Jun-05 5:42 

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