Changing text color of radio buttons and group boxes

[Dan203]

OK this is stupid and probably has been answered a hundred times, but I've searched and I can't seem to find the answer.

I have a dialog based app with a dark background. I want to set all the text in the dialog to a light color so it can be seen against the dark background. So far I've done this for most controls using this code...

HBRUSH CMyAppDlg::OnCtlColor(CDC* pDC, CWnd* pWnd, UINT nCtlColor)
{
	switch (nCtlColor)
	{
	case CTLCOLOR_BTN:
	case CTLCOLOR_DLG:
		return CreateSolidBrush(BACKGROUND_COLOR);
	case CTLCOLOR_STATIC:
		pDC->SetBkMode(TRANSPARENT);
		pDC->SetTextColor(TEXT_COLOR);
		return CreateSolidBrush(BACKGROUND_COLOR);
	default:
		return CDialog::OnCtlColor(pDC, pWnd, nCtlColor);
	}
}

However the radio buttons and group box labels change their background color but not their text color. Am I missing something obvious here?

Attached is a small screen shot of what I'm getting. As you can see the standard labels (i.e. Fade-in and Fade-out) change color correctly, but the group box labels and radio button text do not.

Thanks,
Dan

[VictorN]

... I have a dialog based app with a dark background. I want to set all the text in the dialog to a light color ...

HBRUSH CMyAppDlg::OnCtlColor(CDC* pDC, CWnd* pWnd, UINT nCtlColor)
{
	switch (nCtlColor)
	{
	case CTLCOLOR_BTN:
	case CTLCOLOR_DLG:
		return CreateSolidBrush(BACKGROUND_COLOR);
	case CTLCOLOR_STATIC:
		pDC->SetBkMode(TRANSPARENT);
		pDC->SetTextColor(TEXT_COLOR);
		return CreateSolidBrush(BACKGROUND_COLOR);
	default:
		return CDialog::OnCtlColor(pDC, pWnd, nCtlColor);
	}
}

However the radio buttons and group box labels change their background color but not their text color. Am I missing something obvious here?

Yes, you did.
You are setting text color only for static controls (and for read-only edit boxes), not for any other types!

[Dan203]

I tried setting the code to simply...

HBRUSH CMyAppDlg::OnCtlColor(CDC* pDC, CWnd* pWnd, UINT nCtlColor)
{
	pDC->SetBkMode(TRANSPARENT);
	pDC->SetTextColor(TEXT_COLOR);
	return CreateSolidBrush(BACKGROUND_COLOR);
}

The text color of the radio buttons and group boxes still did not change. I did some more Googling and found a few references that suggest that this might not work when using a manifest to get the newer style controls. Does anyone know if this is the case?

Dan

[Dan203]

I answered my own question. Turns out that the manifest/theme does prevent you from changing the text color of check boxes, radio button and group boxes. I'm in a bit of a hurry and didn't want to have to subclass all the controls to fix this so I simply turned off the themes on these controls using this code in OnInitDialog...

SetWindowTheme(GetDlgItem(IDC_RDO_BOX_TEXT)->GetSafeHwnd(), L"", L"");

Dan