Just thought I'd let you all know that although the documentation states that the only availble theme in the current CTP is the Microsoft Acropolis Theme, the Theme library does have other themes defined. These include Microsoft Acropolis Sepia Theme, Windows Classic Theme, Windows XP Theme and Windows Vista Theme. It does appear that the Winows ... themes are not fully implemented as yet, but they can be used to give you an idea of the theming process. You can change your theme by setting the Theme attribute of the Application element. e.g
<AcropolisApplication x:Class="RssReader.Application"
xmlns="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Acropolis.Windows;assembly=Microsoft.Acropolis.Windows"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:Acx="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Acropolis.CommonFx;assembly=Microsoft.Acropolis.CommonFx"
xmlns:Afx="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Acropolis.PartFx;assembly=Microsoft.Acropolis.PartFx"
Theme="Microsoft Acropolis Sepia Theme"
StartupUri="Window1.xaml">
I'll be interested to find out more about plugging in your own Themes. The way that the Themes are currently designed does not appear to be ideal. The Acropolis and Acropolis Sepia themes are distinct classes, and do not differ greatly, apart from loading a different xaml resource dictionary from an embedded resource. If each theme class is implemented like this, I can envisage the theme assembly soon becoming very large. It seems as though much of the code could be handled by a generic helper class? Wouldn't it also be more efficient to use a pluggin type approach, and separate out the themes in to different assemblies?
