Themes

UnoDock ships six ready-to-use docking themes. Each one is a Theme subclass assigned to DockingManager.Theme; application content is never re-created when the theme changes.

<dock:DockingManager xmlns:dock="using:UnoDock" xmlns:themes="using:UnoDock.Themes">
    <dock:DockingManager.Theme>
        <themes:VS2010Theme />
    </dock:DockingManager.Theme>
</dock:DockingManager>

Aero, Metro and VS2010 are fixed light designs: their chrome keeps its colors when the application or window switches to Dark. The Gallery's Theme picker switches between all of them at runtime.

Generic	Aero	Metro
VS2010	Fluent Light	Fluent Dark

Native TabView document tabs

DockingManager.DocumentTabStripMode = DocumentTabStripMode.TabView hosts document tabs in the platform WinUI TabView, giving document panes the native Fluent tab shape, hover, selection, close buttons and overflow scrolling. It pairs naturally with FluentTheme:

<dock:DockingManager DocumentTabStripMode="TabView">
    <dock:DockingManager.Theme>
        <themes:FluentTheme />
    </dock:DockingManager.Theme>
</dock:DockingManager>

Each TabViewItem hosts the same docking tab item as its header, so tab dragging and tear-off, context menus, header/icon templates, keyboard navigation and automation keep working; tool panes keep the docking strip. The default, DocumentTabStripMode.Docking, draws the theme-painted strip used by the classic themes. The Gallery's View menu switches between them.

Resource keys

Every theme is a resource dictionary of UnoDock.* keys. The same keys can be placed in DockingManager.Resources (followed by Refresh()) to override individual values of any theme.

Base palette

PaneBrush, HeaderBrush, InactiveTabBrush, BorderBrush, ForegroundBrush, SecondaryForegroundBrush, DisabledForegroundBrush, HoverBrush, PressedBrush, AccentBrush, ActiveTitleBrush, plus the metrics FontSize, TitleHeight, TabHeight, ToolTabHeight, RailThickness, ChromeButtonSize, ButtonCornerRadius, ActiveTabIndicatorThickness, TabCornerRadius, TabHorizontalPadding and PaneCornerRadius.

State-specific chrome

These keys are optional. Each falls back to the base slot that historically painted the same surface, so existing dictionaries render unchanged.

Thickness keys (PaneBorderThickness excepted) accept a Thickness, a uniform x:Double or an x:String such as 0,3,0,4 (left, top, right, bottom).

Caption and title buttons

Tool-caption, auto-hide flyout, floating-caption and documents-list buttons of the classic themes use these keys; Fluent keeps the platform Button states.

A disabled classic button paints its glyph with DisabledForegroundBrush; a palette without a distinct disabled brush dims the resting glyph instead.

Shape and layout options

DocumentTabShape (Rectangle or Slanted), TabIndicatorPlacement (Top or Bottom), BoldSelectedTab (x:Boolean), DocumentTabSpacing (x:Double), SelectedTabRaise (x:Double: unselected document tabs sit this much lower than the selected one), DocumentTabStripInset (x:Double: space before the first document tab), ToolTitleCornerRadius (x:Double: top corners of tool captions) and FloatingDocumentMenuButton (x:Boolean: whether floating document windows show the window-position ▾ button; default True).

Menus, docking guides, navigator and auto-hide

Built-in Generic values

GenericTheme has no dictionary of state keys; while it is assigned, and only when neither the application nor another dictionary supplies the key, it uses a grey inactive / blue active 3 px floating frame, a light-blue caption button outline, a distinct disabled glyph brush, a 2 px raised selected document tab and no ▾ button on floating document windows. The automatic palette (no Theme) is unchanged.

Brushes may be solid or gradient. A minimal custom theme:

<ResourceDictionary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
                    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
    <SolidColorBrush x:Key="UnoDock.WorkspaceBrush" Color="#1F2937" />
    <SolidColorBrush x:Key="UnoDock.ActiveDocumentTabBrush" Color="#F59E0B" />
    <x:String x:Key="UnoDock.TabIndicatorPlacement">Bottom</x:String>
</ResourceDictionary>

Authoring a packaged theme

Derive from Theme, return the dictionary's ms-appx:///<Assembly>/<path> URI from GetResourceUri(), and override ChromeTheme to ElementTheme.Light or ElementTheme.Dark when the design targets one color scheme. Give each theme assembly its own root namespace; the public theme class can still live in UnoDock.Themes.

Verification

The classic-themes desktop suite checks that each packaged theme resolves its dictionary under a dark host, that VS2010 moves the gold tab and content band with document activation, paints caption buttons with its hover and disabled brushes and gives the auto-hide flyout caption the tool title states, that Metro's indicator takes the accent only while active, that Aero's slanted outline follows the arranged tab without widening it, and that switching back to Generic restores the default chrome while keeping application content. It also writes one screenshot per theme.

The palettes were authored independently from rendered observations of the reference themes; no reference XAML, images or color tables are used.