In the course of getting IE scrollbars working with WindowBlinds we discovered something rather shocking. Something that we're quite sure that no one outside Microsoft was aware of - visual styles are implemented quite like a hack. Not at all how we thought they were.

On Windows XP, WindowBlinds is able to use the new APIs in uxtheme.dll to skin Windows. We did this because we *thought* that this would make it more compatible and faster.

But we discovered today that the Windows XP visual style engine (drum roll) uses API HOOKS to do its things. Remember how certain advocates of a certain patch have made a big deal that WindowBlinds uses system hooks? And as a result, we're not as "native" as visual styles? Turns out, visual styles are doing the same thing - system hooks. EVERY PROCESS on XP that is skinned by XP has uxtheme.dll tied to it.

Let me be clear: If you run visual styles on Windows XP, every program that is "skinned" by it gets a full copy of uxtheme.dll copied into memory via a system hook (just like if you run WindowBlinds you get a copy of wblind.dll copied into that process's memory).

What this also means is that anyone who criticizes WindowBlinds for using system hooks and uses that as a reason to boost visual styles is either being dishonest or doesn't understand how visual styles actually work. It is, frankly, very surprising that Microsoft, with access to the Windows source code one presumes, would implement it in this way.

Now obviously, since WindowBlinds works much the same way, I'm not going to condemn it. System hooks were designed so that third parties could integrate their software with the system with a minimal impact. It's just that MS isn't a third party. And that anti-WindowBlinds people have used the SetWindowsHookEx (system hooks in general) as a blunt instrument on it when all the time visual styles uses a nearly identical hook and attaches the entire uxtheme.dll to each and every process that it skins.

In short, visual styles are most definitely no more "native" than WindowBlinds. It's just bundled. Any third party could have done (and has done in the form of WB) the same exact thing without access to the source code of Windows.