change default windows colors

hi everyone,
what i want to do is to change the standard windows colors of windows and controls. e.g. any windows common control uses unchangeably the default grey colors.

i already tried to figure out, how to achieve this. i tried the api-commands 'SetClassWord()' and 'SetClassLong()' with which i could change the cursor (value GCL_HCURSOR), but not the color (value GCL_HBRBACKGROUND).
another way that should be possible is to overwrite the default Redraw-Message of the WNDPROC. however, i didn't get this to work neither.

i highly apprechiate any help on this.

Take a look at GetSysColors and SetSyscolors APIs... here's a short example:


private Declare Function SetSysColors Lib "user32" (byval nChanges as Long, lpSysColor as Long, lpColorValues as Long) as Long
private Declare Function GetSysColor Lib "user32" (byval nIndex as Long) as Long
Const COLOR_SCROLLBAR = 0 'The Scrollbar colour
Const COLOR_BACKGROUND = 1 'Colour of the background with no wallpaper
Const COLOR_ACTIVECAPTION = 2 'Caption of Active Window
Const COLOR_INACTIVECAPTION = 3 'Caption of Inactive window
Const COLOR_MENU = 4 'Menu
Const COLOR_WINDOW = 5 'Windows background
Const COLOR_WINDOWFRAME = 6 'Window frame
Const COLOR_MENUTEXT = 7 'Window Text
Const COLOR_WINDOWTEXT = 8 '3D dark shadow (Win95)
Const COLOR_CAPTIONTEXT = 9 'Text in window caption
Const COLOR_ACTIVEBORDER = 10 'Border of active window
Const COLOR_INACTIVEBORDER = 11 'Border of inactive window
Const COLOR_APPWORKSPACE = 12 'Background of MDI desktop
Const COLOR_HIGHLIGHT = 13 'Selected item background
Const COLOR_HIGHLIGHTTEXT = 14 'Selected menu item
Const COLOR_BTNFACE = 15 'Button
Const COLOR_BTNSHADOW = 16 '3D shading of button
Const COLOR_GRAYTEXT = 17 'Grey text, of zero if dithering is used.
Const COLOR_BTNTEXT = 18 'Button text
Const COLOR_INACTIVECAPTIONTEXT = 19 'Text of inactive window
Const COLOR_BTNHIGHLIGHT = 20 '3D highlight of button
Const COLOR_2NDACTIVECAPTION = 27 'Win98 only: 2nd active window color
Const COLOR_2NDINACTIVECAPTION = 28 'Win98 only: 2nd inactive window color
private Sub Form_Load()
'KPD-Team 1998
'URL: http://www.allapi.net/
'E-Mail: [email protected]
'get the caption's active color
col& = GetSysColor(COLOR_ACTIVECAPTION)
'Change the active caption's color to red
t& = SetSysColors(1, COLOR_ACTIVECAPTION, RGB(255, 0, 0))
MsgBox "The old title bar color was" + Str$(col&) + " and is now" + Str$(GetSysColor(COLOR_ACTIVECAPTION))
End Sub

thanks so far,
only problem is, that this changes the settings system-wide, but i need to change the settings only for specific windows.

Is there some reason you can't just use the BackColor property?

well, most common windows activeX controls don't have this backcolor property. they just use the system-wide defined settings.