[Qt-interest] Windows 7 style/theming (especially toolbars)

[Ross Bencina]

[reposting to qt-interest too..]

Hi Josh

I recommend looking at the source code for QWindowsVistaStyle and see how it 
draws the menu bar. It should be pretty easy to work out what it's doing. 
Take a look at the QStyle documentation to get a feel for how the rest of Qt 
invokes QStyle to render theme elements.

You can probably hack something to create a gradient brush, either by 
copying it from QWindowsVistaStyle or hacking something together out of 
functions from the Windows7 theme API (which I've never looked at, by the 
way).

As a last resort, in terms of accessing the gradient, if it's a linear 
gradient, you might be able to fudge it by reading back pixel colors from 
the window after the menu bar is drawn.

Ross.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Josh" <jnfo-c at grauman.com>
To: "Ross Bencina" <rossb-lists at audiomulch.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2010 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] Windows 7 style/theming (especially toolbars)


> Ross,
>
> Thanks so much for the reply. I'd like my app to follow the active 
> Windows7 theme, if that's easy. What I would 'like' to do, but don't know 
> if it's possible, is to get the brush that's used by the active Windows 7 
> theme to paint the MenuBar, and then use that brush for the 
> application-global style sheet to set the background brush for QToolBar...
>
> Thanks!
>
> Josh
>
>> Josh wrote:
>>> Does anyone know if Qt drawns the main menu (ie. File, Edit, etc.) at 
>>> the
>>> top of a main window or passes off the drawing to the OS? If Qt draws 
>>> it,
>>> maybe there is a way to get the background gradient it is using to draw
>>> the main menu and use it for the background of toolbars? Any ideas?
>>
>> I think by default the toolbar background uses the QPallette.window() 
>> brush in the Windows style.
>>
>> If you create your own QStyle subclass (QWindowsStyle or 
>> QWindowsVistaStyle subclass perhaps?) you can definitely do whatever you 
>> like with regard to toolbar background rendering. You just need to hook 
>> in to the appropriate draw routines, and perhaps you need to also make 
>> the toolbars non-transparent, not sure, you can also do this in your 
>> QStyle subclass in the polish() method.
>>
>> An alternative might be to override the background brush for just 
>> QToolbar using an application-global style sheet.
>>
>> I guess the first question to ask is: do you just want it to look like 
>> Win7 or do you want it to follow the active Win7 theme?
>>
>> Good luck
>>
>> Ross.
>>
>>
>>