I have now got a weird behaviour in my development environment that I cannot explain.   A compiled version of my application is showing 3d radio buttons whereas in my development environment it now is flattening my radiobuttons with no theme associated with the application object nor any code to apply a theme.  Is there a mysterious notheme theme which influences behaviour.   Even stranger is that a collegue running the same compiled version with no themes is getting flattened radio buttons.   I restarted my computer to see if that made a difference and it does not. 

Check your build options in the PB IDE. Do you have 'Use Windows classic style' ticked or unticked? That can affect the look of a build application. Note also, if you have a manifest file with your application, it can turn on / off the 'new' Windows look too. Aslo check your setting on the Security tab for Generate options. The tick box, I believe, only works if you have it set to 'Embedded manifest'.

I think it would have been better to have the theme set at the object/window level and then allow it to propagate through the entire app via inheritance. Individual controls within the DataWindow would have a theme setting.

Thanks for your responses!   I recompiled the theme test app in classic mode with no manifest and still get flattened objects both in development and as executable.    Even in preview mode when editing a datawindow I am seeing flattened objects - see attached file.   It is as though the PB environment is picking up a theme itself...

I submitted a bug with themes. When your app does not use themes and you do not deploy PBTHEME190.DLL with your runtime, the app runs very slowly. Scrolling a grid datawindow is particularly slow.

My guess is that despite them being turned off, it is constantly attempting to locate the DLL in the system path so it can be loaded into memory.

It is possible you have stumbled across a bug where it is applying theming when themes are not activated.

Hi Mark, 

We appreciate your feedbacks. Please note that we will further enhance the themes in the coming versions.  For example, 2019 R2 will allow you to configure theme settings for selected controls or objects.

Regarding this comment, 

"2) Using a theme on a datawindow object replaces any datawindow expressions you might have to dynamically control color etc. Again any mature powerbuilder application probably has a lot of code that is written to control colors etc of object dynamically using datawindow expressions."

Actually, the current behavior is: "With DataWindows, after you apply a UI theme, the UI settings (except border and resizable) of DataWindow are determined by the “theme.json” file but can be changed by the expression or the Modify method."

If you do find that the theme cannot work together with expressions, please contact Appeon Support and open an ticket.

Best regards... Julie

Thanks everyone.  I will check with the compiler on what settings he had when compiling the app and look into that!

Mark