[mike_hearn]

IIRC most of these controls only shipped in comctl32 much later than they launched, and comctl32 came with the OS which had many-year upgrade cycles. So in practice everyone invented their own because they didn't want to wait.

I'm sure people who care could make a consistent desktop, but our memories differ on how popular that was. The theming craze was a 90s thing, so even when apps didn't roll their own brand like MS themselves did, apps often let you apply custom themes to change the look.

In theory it's easier than ever to do that. You could create a browser extension that used user stylesheets to restyle websites to have a consistent look and feel. People make that effort to build ad blockers but not to build consistent looks, so I guess there isn't that much demand.