Grayed-out captions hard to read - any solution?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

In XP (I'm using SP2, both Professional and Home editions), I find disabled
menu items, field captions, etc, very hard to read. They are almost as light
as the background. Is there a straightforward way to improve the contrast?
Thanks.
 
Jim Gawn said:
In XP (I'm using SP2, both Professional and Home editions), I find disabled
menu items, field captions, etc, very hard to read. They are almost as light
as the background. Is there a straightforward way to improve the contrast?
Thanks.
Click to expand...


No, not really; disabled items are called "grayed" for a reason. Technically it's possible but it will affect more than just
disabled items. If you save the theme to a (.theme) file, you can open it in a text editor (eg Notepad) and set these two items
manually:

ButtonHilight
ButtonShadow

ButtonHilight is the highlight color of 3D objects (the usually a whitish color of the top and left sides of buttons, windows, etc.)
and ButtonShadow is the shadow color of 3D objects (the usually blackish color of the bottom and right sides of buttons, windows,
etc.)

You'll notice that disabled items are actually the text written two times, one on top of the other. You'll also notice that they
happen to correspond to the highlight and shadow colors. So, by setting those two items, you can select the color of disabled
items, but you will also be setting the colors for all 3D objects in all of Windows (the colors used to render the 3D effect) plus
any (many?) other places where those colors are used (eg: the background of the Common Places toolbar on the left side of Browse
dialogs, and such.)

I'm not sure, though it maybe possible to set the disabled colors manually using a skin; but I doubt it.
 
Back
Top