Customizing System Colors

Platform Builder for Microsoft Windows CE 5.0

You can customize the colors of display elements by modifying the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\GWE\SysColor registry entry. This registry entry is a binary large object (BLOB) that consists of 29 DWORD values. The following table shows the system colors that correspond to these DWORD values, from the first value to the last.

Registry Order	System color	Description
0	COLOR_SCROLLBAR	Color of the gray area of a scroll bar.
1	COLOR_BACKGROUND	Background color of the desktop window.
2	COLOR_ACTIVECAPTION	Color of the title bar of an active window.
3	COLOR_INACTIVECAPTION	Color of the title bar of an inactive window.
4	COLOR_MENU	Background color of a menu.
5	COLOR_WINDOW	Background color of a window.
6	COLOR_WINDOWFRAME	Color of a window frame.
7	COLOR_MENUTEXT	Color of the text in a menu.
8	COLOR_WINDOWTEXT	Color of the text in a window.
9	COLOR_CAPTIONTEXT	Color of the text in a title bar and of the size box and scroll bar arrow box.
10	COLOR_ACTIVEBORDER	Color of the border of an active window.
11	COLOR_INACTIVEBORDER	Color of the border of an inactive window.
12	COLOR_APPWORKSPACE	Background color of multiple document interface (MDI) applications.
13	COLOR_HIGHLIGHT	Color of an item selected in a control.
14	COLOR_HIGHLIGHTTEXT	Color of the text of an item selected in a control.
15	COLOR_BTNFACE	Color of the face of a button.
16	COLOR_BTNSHADOW	Shadow color of buttons for edges that face away from the light source.
17	COLOR_GRAYTEXT	Color of shaded text. This color is set to 0 if the current display driver does not support a solid gray color.
18	COLOR_BTNTEXT	Color of the text for push buttons.
19	COLOR_INACTIVECAPTIONTEXT	Color of the text in the title bar of an inactive window.
20	COLOR_BTNHIGHLIGHT	Highlight color of buttons for edges that face the light source.
21	COLOR_3DDKSHADOW	Color of the dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements.
22	COLOR_3DLIGHT	Highlight color of three-dimensional display elements for edges that face the light source.
23	COLOR_INFOTEXT	Color of the text for ToolTip controls.
24	COLOR_INFOBK	Background color for ToolTip controls.
25	COLOR_STATIC	Background color for static controls and dialog boxes. Supported in Windows CE 2.0 and later.
26	COLOR_STATICTEXT	Color of the text for static controls. Supported in Windows CE 2.0 and later.
27	COLOR_GRADIENTACTIVECAPTION	Color of the title bar of an active window that is filled with a color gradient.
28	COLOR_GRADIENTINACTIVECAPTION	Color of the title bar of an inactive window that is filled with a color gradient.

For the DWORD that corresponds to each color, the first byte represents the red value for the color, the second byte represents the green value for the color, the third byte represents the blue value for the color, and the fourth byte is always 0.

The following example shows how to specify the system colors.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\GWE]
    "SysColor"=hex:E0,E0,E0,00, 00,80,80,00, 80,80,FF,00, 80,80,80,00,
                   C0,C0,C0,00, FF,FF,FF,00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00,
                   00,00,00,00, FF,FF,00,00, C0,C0,C0,00, C0,C0,C0,00,
                   80,80,80,00, 00,00,FF,00, FF,FF,00,00, C0,C0,C0,00,
                   80,80,80,00, 80,80,80,00, 00,00,00,00, C0,C0,C0,00,
                   FF,FF,FF,00, 00,00,00,00, DF,DF,DF,00, 00,00,00,00,
                   FF,FF,E1,00, FF,FF,E1,00, 00,00,00,00, 10,84,D0,00,
                   B5,B5,B5,00

See Also