Why are icons in property sheets rendered with so few colors? - winapi

I am creating a property sheet shell extension and want to have a little icon to set off my property tab from the standard system tabs. Unfortunately, my icon is being rendered almost entirely in grey.
Original image:
In the property sheet tab:
At first I thought this was somehow my problem, but then I saw that TortoiseSVN appears to have the same problem:
This happens in both Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Does anyone know why these images are appearing so muted? Also, does anyone have any hints on how to make the icon look good in spite of this colorlessness?

The PropertySheet function initialises its tab control with a 16 color (ILC_COLOR) ImageList and copies the supplied icon for each page into it. There doesn't seem to be a way to override this and supply your own ImageList (or to specify the bit depth of the created ImageList). Presumably this is a legacy of the original Windows 95 code that never got updated as things moved on.

Instead of Property Sheets, you can use Tab Control, which makes tabs management more flexible and clear. And of course you can use any type of icons, because you have to create your own ImageList.
Here you can read about Tab Controls:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb760548(v=vs.85).aspx
And here you can access example usage of Tab Controls:
Icons in Win32 Property Pages are ugly - 4 bit icons

Related

Change context style menu windows 10

I managed to interpret a mmstyles file through a tool called "msstylesEditor" but I can't find where I can modify the values for the background and font color of the context menu.
Also if anyone could link me to some tutorials on how to make theme like those found on DeviantArt i'd be glad ! I couldn't find anything !
Here is how msstylesEditor looks
The background can be changed under Menu -> POPUPBACKGROUND. This is an image (1x1px). You have to export it, change its color, then replace the old image.
You also might want to look at the POPUPBORDER and POPUPITEM parts, in order to fully change the menus appearance. I havent verified where the font color is located, but i guess its the TEXTCOLOR properties
of the just stated parts.
The aim of the tool you linked, is mainly to modify existing themes. The styles on DeviantArt are probably made using a (commercial) tool called "Windows Style Builder".

Activereports (under VB6) issue

I have to modify an old VB6 program that uses ActiveReports 2.0 at work and I am having some problems (BTW I have never used this program before and only have a basic knowledge of VB6)...
I have to make some text boxes biggers which is pretty easy to do but as soon as I move them a whole section of text (and not simply the content of that text box) disappear.
I have noticed that it was in some sort of section (sorry, I don't know how they call that) which englobed those text boxes so I made it bigger and that made no difference.
What could be causing this?
Thank you!
Nick
It sounds like the TextBox is inside a UserControl. A UserControl is created by a developer, and is basically one control with any number of other controls in it. You can check to see if there are any User Controls in your project in the Project Explorer (Ctrl+R).
One way to know exactly what class the control belongs to is to open your form in design mode (Shift+F7), click on the control, and look at the Properties window (F4). The drop-down list should show the currently selected control's class name in bold, then the name of the object.
What is the control's class? If it is anything other than TextBox, then this would explain the unexpected behavior you experienced.

Making TextBox text theme aware

I created a page.i want to change the background of Textbox when theme of emulator is changed to light.The letters cant be visible while changing the themes.is there any solution?
If you use the default TextBox control inside Visual Studio it is fully theme aware. If you have set the colours yourself then you need to perform the theme aware changes in code behind.
For more information, please see the following :-
http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/ThemeawareWindowsPhoneapplication
I assume you are referring to TextBlock rather than TextBox (as the latter automatically has style support).
You should never declare a TextBlock without a Style attribute, such as Style={StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}. A full list of available styles can be found on MSDN: Theme Resources for Windows Phone
Also of relevance is: How to: Apply Theme Resources for Windows Phone
NB: Due to the way Mango was designed, backing into your application after changing themes will not apply the new theme. You will need to restart the application to see the changed theme.
Update
Based on your screenshots, you have two choices:
Reskin ("Edit Template" in Blend) each of the controls that you use to redefine a style in which the various colour-related properties are hardcoded
Use an alternate, lighter, background image when in the white theme in order to improve the contrast. I've blogged about how you can define theme-aware resources (and also mentioned it on other SO questions).
Put simply, you can either submit to the theme or force it to remain the way you want it.
We can set a theme as default to our application.When we log in our application the phone theme will be changed to its suitable theme and when we log out change back to original
here s the link .

How to use the color picker dialog to set color properties in the property editor?

This sounds like a trivial question, but it's proved quite hard to google anything about this.
When editing Color-typed properties through the property editor (when designing WinForms), a little editor pops up with three tabs: Custom, Web and System. I want to set a custom color by using the standard color picker dialog because none of the listed Custom colors are suitable.
I am sure that this used to be possible by double-clicking a blank color on the Custom tab, but this just picks the color being double-clicked and closes the drop-down in my VS2008. Am I imagining this, or did it really use to be possible? Can I do this in VS2008 somehow?
Right click on a blank colour in the palette shown by the custom tab. Brings up the "Define Color" dialog (in VS2008 C# Express, and I imagine the same in other versions).
EDIT - Having discovered this by experimentation, the MSDN library describes it here.
Interestingly, no keyboard-only interface is described.

set default fonts, shapes, etc in powerpoint through registry, not themes

I apologize, this may sound like it has been asked before, but the answers I found do not seem to work in my case.
Is there a way to set the default powerpoint options (fonts, shapes, colors, fills, thicknesses etc) in the registry options, rather than jumping through hoops (saving a default theme via Slidemaster, which is the current way suggested my MS). I find that each time I manage to set my own default theme to propagate across all newly created PPTX files, Microsoft finds a way to enforce its default themes. The current recommended method of creating a default theme through SlideMaster only seems to work when I do file_new_custom theme, and set that as a default. But it does not seem to work for 'blank presentation', and for creating a new file with *pptx extension outside of PowerPoint. Actually, I would much prefer if the entire theme selection window never appeared, all I need is a blank white screen, with the settings I know and like.
Thank you in advance!
Is there a way to set the default powerpoint options (fonts, shapes, colors, fills, thicknesses etc) in the registry option
No. These are all "presentation-level" defaults, not "application-level". They travel with and can be different for each PPTX file or template/theme file.
What you can do is create your own default presentation, the one you get when you choose new blank presentation. I've got an article about this on the PPT FAQ site I maintain:
Create a default "blank" presentation with your own defaults
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00245_Create_a_default_-blank-_presentation_with_your_own_defaults.htm
You'll also want to read this:
Set default text and drawing shape styles
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00039_Set_default_text_and_drawing_shape_styles.htm
If that still leaves questions, post back (and please indicate the version of Office you have ... e.g. Windows Office 365 or whatever ... platform and version. It matters.)

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