>Hi Anton.
>I've searched in the web and read something about this and now I'm not sure if Outlook colors are based on GetSysColors or even in Windows themes...
>It seems there's predefined schemas based on active theme and, when there's no active theme it uses Windows colors.

Now I found that MS Office really uses some predefined effect schemas for STANDARD Microsoft visual styles. I decompiled standard luna.msstyles and then compiled it with no change in StyleBuilder. Curious! Now MS Office 2003 uses system colors!
Looks like StyleBuilder loses Office-related info when decompiles standard visual style or MS Office has predefined schemas for standard microsoft visual styles only. But how it distinguishes them?

>I'm really confused... must be a pattern else ActiveX developers wouldn't be able to "mimic" the colors.

No. As I can see applications with Office-like UI actually use various colors and effects. For example menu background color in ACDSee is different from MS Ofiice menu background while other elements look similar. Thus, there no standard there((( and UI developers actually define colors and effects on their own.
IMHO there is no need for you to copy MS Office UI logic exactly too.
As for me it is more easy to use system colors than Theme API or predefined schemas.