In Visual Styles Reference: Functions of MSDN, I found an interesting functions, that is, SetWindowTheme(). It can be used to either to apply or remove visual style to/from a control/window, there are several steps need to be done to enable Visual Style in an application.
To use Windows Theme api, you'll need JwaUxTheme
unit of JEDI API Library.
However, applying theme from Windows Theme files (.theme
) to an application seems has to be done by turning off visual style from controls and write owner drawn controls based on information from .theme
files. MSDN has a documentation about .theme
file specification (see the first reference below).
Some good references:
Is Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Themes bad? There is a code example how to load it here.
If you use VCL, Theme Engine and Skin Engine has a complete support of themes for Windows XP.
If beauty application is your priority (without supports for Windows themes), I think, BusinessSkinForm and DynamicSkinForm is the best choice.