Support for VSF themes

I have been trying to make use of custom themes in my applications but am a bit frustrated by (what appear to be) limitations in the TMS implementation of themes. As far as I can see, the AdvAppStyler component only supports a built in set of (mostly) Office based themes however Delphi itself allows the use of any theme (such as those at www.delphistyles.com) via VSF files. Some other component suites (e.g. LMD) also support the use of these themes.  

It is clear from the changes in the latest versions of TMS Components that you are making a major effort to extend support for themes throughout the component set. However, do you plan to extend that to include all VSF themes, not just the built in ones?

Regards,
David Wilbourn

The themes that can be selected via TAdvAppStyler are not related to VCL Styles. These themes exist already much longer than VCL Styles itself exist. These themes can be used in any Delphi version, i.e. also the older Delphi versions that don't have VCL Styles.

In the past couple of months, we have done a significant amount of work to support VCL Styles in our TMS Component Pack UI controls. The status at this moment is that majority of UI controls have VCL Styles support. When VCL Styles are enabled at Delphi project level, our VCL UI controls should pick up these VCL Styles and render accordingly.
If you might for some reason still encounter some anomalies related to this, please share the details so we can investigate.

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for the clarification. The control I am having problems with is the InspectorBar. I can set the TMS Theme for this control using the TAdvAppStyler and TAdvFormStyler but setting the Project VCL Style has no effect. HOWEVER, I just tried the same control in a simple demo app and it does work there so there must be something else in my main app that is messing it up. I will investigate....

Hi Bruno,

I found the problem, the InspectorBar does not use the VCL Style if the app is 64bit. 
I used the AdvMenuDemo, which has an InspectorBar and set the Project|Options|Apperance|Custom Style to something other than the Default. Compiled the app as both 32 and 64 bit. The 32bit version displays the InspectorBar with the selected Style, the 64bit version uses the default style for just the InspectorBar. 

Are you sure your Win64 library path is up to date and points to the latest TInspectorBar source?

You are, of course, quite right. I had multiple copies of the libraries. I have both XE3 and Rio installed and for some other 3rd party components, I need separate library folders for all 4 versions (XE3 32 & 64, Rio 32 & 64). At some stage the TMS folder got duplicated as well. 


My apologies for wasting your time!

Glad I could help!