Tech Tip...Control UI Theme

Tech Tip: Control UI Theme

ReportBuilder 10 introduced support for Themes (Skins). There are a couple of options for specifying which theme is used.

1. Report Designer

   From the Report Designer select View | Themes from the main menu and then select the theme that you would like to use. The specified theme will be stored in RBuilder.ini and used as the default theme the next time you run RB. 

2. RBuilder.ini

   When deploying an application, you can deploy RBuilder.ini so that ReportBuilder will use a specific theme.

3. TppThemeManager

   At run-time TppThemeManager can be used to programmatically specify a theme.

   TppThemeManager is defined in ppToolbarTBX.pas. Here are the public class methods.

    TppThemeManager = class
     public
       class function GetCurrentThemeName: String;
       class procedure GetThemeNames(aThemeNames: TStrings);
       class procedure SavePreferences;
       class procedure SetCurrentTheme(aThemeName: String);
     end;

   Example: Set the current theme

   uses
     ppToolbarTBX;
       
   TppThemeManager.SetCurrentTheme('Office2003');

   Example: Set the current theme and sub-theme (user scheme)

   uses
     ppToolbarTBX, ppTBXOffice2007Theme;  
   
   TppThemeManager.SetCurrentTheme('Office2007');
   
   ppOffice2007Scheme.UserScheme := usBlack;

4. Older operating systems

   Some older operating systems, such as Win9x do not support the Office2003 theme. Use the Defaut them instead.

   Example:

   uses
     ppToolbarTBX;
   
   
   
   TppThemeManager.SetCurrentTheme('Default');