Customizing System Colors

Other versions of this page are also available for the following:

Windows Mobile Not SupportedWindows Embedded CE Supported

8/28/2008

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

Other Resources

Graphics, Windowing and Events (GWES)