I think this question has been already asked multiple times, but for some reason I couldn't find any related posts so I have to ask. Please just give me a link to a post if the question was asked before.
My problem with Visual styles (VC++ v.6) is that I can't let them work. (Important notes: 1] I only need to style the Windows controls like buttons and checkboxes, NOT the Common controls, so I'm not going to use ComCtl32.dll v.6 library neither. 2] I need to have the resulting app 100% compatible with older win versions.) I installed the appropriate SDK and began crawling through MSDN. I found articles where they recommend using OpenThemeData() to obtain an HTHEME handle and then owner draw a control using DrawThemeBackground() and similar functions, which is very complicated (I should do this for every control!) and incompatible, because in case Visual styles are not going to be used (e.g. w98), I should owner draw the control by myself too (I can't let system do it in such case, because the control is already owner drawn).
So my question is: Is there any easier approach to have Visual styles working with basic Windows controls (not Common controls) than the one described in MSDN?
