change color of title bar programatically

  • Thread starter Thread starter ran
  • Start date Start date
R

ran

Hi,
I would like to change the color of the title bar when my app starts.
I do not want to use themes - is there any way to change that color through code?
Please help - I could not find it anywhere.
Thanks
 
I believe that this 'property' is set globally for all applications in the
system which use captioned overlapped windows. You might test that by
changing the settings in the Control Panel Display applet and see if it
affects your application. If so, you'll either have to change everyone
(which is a poor choice, in my opinion), or completely implement your own
caption (which seems like a waste of time, just to change a color). Are you
sure that the title bar color is important to your application?

Paul T.
 
Paul G. Tobey said:
I believe that this 'property' is set globally for all applications in the
system which use captioned overlapped windows. You might test that by
changing the settings in the Control Panel Display applet and see if it
affects your application. If so, you'll either have to change everyone
(which is a poor choice, in my opinion), or completely implement your own
caption (which seems like a waste of time, just to change a color). Are you
sure that the title bar color is important to your application?

Paul T.
Click to expand...
Paul,
Yes - this is vital to my app.
In addition - I see no way to change color through control panel
except through themes.
Hello? any MVP out there?
Thanks
 
Yes, through the set of themes. Does that make the change to the .NET CF
program's title bar when you do that? If so, then you'll have to put on
your thinking cap and start working.

I find it hard to believe that the color of the caption bar is 'critical' to
the operation of your program. Why? Are you sure that that is not a
foolish decision? What about people who are 'color-blind' and cannot
distinguish certain colors from others? "When the window caption is red,
shut down the nuclear reactor" is not a good instruction.

As I mentioned in my first message, you'll have to do all of the drawing
yourself, as well as window dragging, etc. I don't think I'd want to do
this from managed code, at this point. You'll need to catch the WM_PAINT
message and take that opportunity to draw your 'caption bar' in whatever
color you want. You'll also have to change the clipping region and
coordinate system, after you've done that, so that the 'client' area, after
your title bar is drawn, corresponds to the area below that caption. Then,
you can continue drawing the real window content that you need.

When a mouse down event occurs, you'll need to decide where the click
happened. If it happened in your 'title bar', you'll need to capture the
mouse and start tracking mouse move events, showing some type of window
dragging feedback. When the mouse is released, call SetWindowPos() to
reposition the window.

If you have menus, you're going to have problems getting the command bar
correctly located, too, I think.

I think that, if menus were not involved in the window, I could probably do
this in about a week from C++. With menus, there are going to be all kinds
of little catches that you have to handle with positioning the command bar,
etc. I'd figure more like three weeks for that.

Paul T.
 
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