Wpf change color theme of application

Question

I am playing around with overwriting the system colors to change the color look of my application. The new system colors are defined in a separate resource dictionary like this:

<SolidColorBrush x:Key="{x:Static SystemColors.ControlBrushKey}" Color="#FF2D2D2D" />

and the file gets loaded properly. But the appearance of the controls is different if I switch the theme of the operating system (Windows 7) between "aero" and "classic". E.g. for "classic" the main part of the application appears in a dark grey color (the color of the ControlBrushKey) (see first figure). But when I start the application when "aero" is active, most of the application still has the "neutral" aero look (second figure). Why ist that? I expected the different SystemColors to be used in the same way, no matter what theme is selected.

Is changing the system colors a good idea? Or would you recommend other solutions?

Answer 1

Problem is that I am not aware which brushes are actually used by the aero theme. I modified all the colors of SystemColors to a dark color, but it made no difference. How do I find out which brushes are used and how do I replace them?

You could take a look at how the default templates are defined. Download dotPeek or some other .NET decompiler and decompile the PresentationFramework.* assemblies in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\WPF\.

You will find the decompiled BAML resources under Resources->PresentationFramework.*.g.resources->themes.