Customizing System Colors
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
Customizing the User Interface
Last updated on Wednesday, April 13, 2005
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.