New UI theme

A new UI theming system is provided to allow for codeless approach to how your application UI is rendered. For detailed instructions on how to use the new UI theme, refer to the section called “Specifying a theme for the application UI” in Users Guide.

System themes and custom themes

Four new system themes (Flat Design Blue, Flat Design Dark, Flat Design Grey, and Flat Design Silver) are provided for you to apply to the window, DataWindow, and all visual controls (except Line, Oval, Rectangle, RoundRectangle, Picture, PictureHyperLink, and Animation) in your applications. You can also customize these system themes or create your own themes based on these system themes.

Applying a theme

To apply a theme to an application, you can either set it in the Themes tab in the Additional Properties of an application object, or use the ApplyTheme function to set the theme dynamically.

The theme will work in runtime, and has no effect in design time.

Modifying the settings of a theme

If after applying a theme, you want to further adjust the display of certain controls/states, you can open the "theme.json" file of the theme in the default or specified directory, and change the corresponding theme settings (with caution).

In case you want to restore the settings of a system theme to its original state, you can do it using the Restore button provided in the Themes tab in the Additional Properties of an application object. The Restore button is only effective when the system theme is located in the default directory.

What can be set by a theme

Each individual control, object, user object, or window can have its own theme settings now, for example, one button can have theme settings different from the other buttons. And controls of the same type in the same window can have their own theme settings, for example, all group boxes in one window can have theme settings different from the group boxes in the other window. To learn how to configure the theme settings for a control or object, refer to the section called “Custom themes” in Users Guide.

Besides that, the following UI elements can be set by the theme file:

  • The UI settings of custom visual user objects

  • The background color, title bar, border, and system buttons (such as maximize, minimize and restore buttons) of window and user object

  • The scroll bar on the OLE control, user object, and window

  • The menu, toolbar, and status bar of window and user object

However, due to technical difficulty, a few controls and their states won’t reach desired UI effects even through you apply a theme. For more information on what can be set by a theme and what cannot, refer to the section called “Specifying a theme for the application UI” in Users Guide.