I think that you should always allow the user to override no matter what <s>... if they choose the blue Office scheme it should be able to always override whatever the OS suggests.

For defaults I would also go with themed colors always. Vista doesn't have Themes by default but it has a default color scheme (which is grey) and I suppose that should be respected especially since htat might change in the future. Even if it is bland it is the official color theme.

My two cents <s>...

+++ Rick ---

>Hi Rick!
>
>Tks for your reply.
>
>You're right.
>
>In Outlook2003Bar the control's themes for XP (Blue, Silver and Olive) are actually hardcoded and in the next version will be also.
>The class has an option to automatically "follow" the same XP active theme like Office 2003 does, but, like you (and others) said, Office 2007 and Vista doesn't have this behavior.
>
>So, I think that I have two ways to follow in the next version:
>
>Let the actual behavior to automatically follow the active XP theme (when using XP, of course) and let Vista themes chosen "manually"
>
>Or
>
>Change the actual behavior and let the developer choose "manually" the desired theme independently of the OS (I still provide the predefined - hardcoded - themes for XP and Vista).
>
>I would like to receive some community feedback about the preferred option.