Is there a way to change the colors used by plain Win32 menus (background, text, and highlight) for a single process, without using SetSysColors?
(SetSysColors does a global change, which is bad, and if you crash or forget to set the colors back with SetSysColors again before exiting, they will not be restored until you logout.)
The SetMenuInfo() API is your friend. It lets you apply any brush to paint your menu's background.
Something along these lines should solve your problem:
MENUINFO mi = { 0 };
mi.cbSize = sizeof(mi);
mi.fMask = MIM_BACKGROUND|MIM_APPLYTOSUBMENUS;
mi.hbrBack = hBrush;
HMENU hMenu = ::GetMenu(hWnd);
SetMenuInfo(hMenu, &mi);
If I believe your comment to Rob, it is for a skinned application, with special look and feel. So the way to go is probably indeed, as ferek points out (in an unfriendly way...) to use owner-drawn menus: you will be able to define precisely their look.
I have to ask, why? Adopting the regular Windows look-and-feel is good; it means users can be confident that there are consistent elements in your user interface, onto which they can map their experience using other software for the platform.
[I'm probably preaching to the converted, of course, but I thought I'd make the point so anyone who reads an answer for this doesn't start making all their menus sky-blue-pink 'cause it looks pretty.]
Related
I am using MFC to create a dialog project and trying to impart color to the buttons.
I came to know that the only way you can do is to make the button owner draw. OnCtlColor() does not work for buttons.
I am able to color the button overriding OnDrawItem , but the problem is that , in the process the 3D cool look (with slightly rounded corner that you get in Win7) is lost.
Is there any way to retain the native look and color the button on top of that?
This is not a trivial task. As long as you are using themed controls (what you want), you cannot do more than the theme allows.
You would have to re-implement drawing of the button on your own, making use of the theme API as much as possible to retain themed look, yet sneak-in your color.
Though note that you can hardly achieve anything better than, what .NET WinForms do, when you set the Button.BackColor:
See also question how to set Button BackColor?
Disassembling the WinForms ButtonStandardAdapter.PaintWorker will give you some idea and API you need to use. Beware, you need to do lots of coding!
For C++/MFC code check out Vista themed Owner-Drawn and Full-Custom Push/Menu/Image Buttons on CodeProject. Which probably actually does, what you want already (the SetBackgroundColor method), so you might reuse it.
So not really sure how to even google search this question... But, I'd like to make an NSWindow, reside in the back of all other windows/apps & I want it to be displayed on every Mission Control space (still in the back).
I've seen other applications that do this, so I know it's possible, just don't know how.
(I'm referring to Lion's function called Mission Control where you can switch through different spaces.)
Found the answer, there's a method/enum to make it so that the window will appear in all "spaces" (mission control).
[self.window setCollectionBehavior:NSWindowCollectionBehaviorCanJoinAllSpaces];
And a method to keep the window to the farthest back possible.
[self.window setLevel:kCGDesktopIconWindowLevelKey - 1];
All you have to do is use these two methods, and it'll do exactly what I requested. However, I wish there was a way to keep it from animating when coming down from Mission control (there is non to my knowledge).
You want to set the NSWindow's level and collectionBehavior properties.
The window level you'll want to use will depend on what behavior you're after from your window. You can find constants for the available window levels in CoreGraphics/CGWindowLevel.h. I'd suggest trying CGWindowLevelForKey(kCGDesktopIconWindowLevelKey) ± 1.
Which collection behavior you specify will also depend on what behavior you're after. The brief description in your question suggests that NSWindowCollectionBehaviorStationary | NSWindowCollectionBehaviorCanJoinAllSpaces may be a good starting point.
I'm building an application to generate an array of colors based on a color chosen by the user.
The default on Mac OS X for color selection is to open a NSColorPanel containing multiple NSColorPickers. But, as the color selection process is the main interaction the user will have with the app, it'd be better to avoid the extra clicks and panel-popping in favor of a more straightforward way.
So, is there any way to add a NSColorPicker object to a window?
I know this is an older question, but check out NSColorWell. From the docs:
NSColorWell is an NSControl for selecting and displaying a single color value.
Interresting Question.
I strongly doubt it (but would love to be proven wrong). NSColorPickers are not NSControls (nor NSCells) so there's no clean wrapper to insert into a window.
Even if you were to instanciate an NSColorPanel and get a reference to its contentView and copy it (with all that defines the color picking controls) to your own window... there's no obvious way of obtaining the color value. NSColorPickers are plug-ins so you can't forsee the controls of a colorPicker.
The only other way I can see (and that's a stretch) would be to manually load the NSColorPickers plug-ins directly. I don't know how successfull this would be.
File a bug report and request the feature?
I previously asked a question about changing the cursor system-wide on OSX. I used NSCursor to change the cursor, but the effects are only as long as the application is active. When another application becomes active, the custom cursor is lost.
Here is a related, more general question. How can you write an application to have system-wife effects? For example drawing an image on-screen even when your application is not active, and something else is?
I understand I probably need to go at a lower level than the Cocoa APIs. I just cannot figure out where to start looking? Any specific Carbon APIs that I need to be looking at? Or even lower?
Any pointers would be appreciated! If you specifically know how to change the cursor system-wide or how to draw an image and move it around (no matter what application is active), that would solve my current problem as well! Can I write an application that can achieve this when its installed on the system?
Thanks!
You can achieve the effect you want, but not the way you're thinking about doing it.
You say,
I am writing a presentation aid application that shows the equivalent of the "laser pointer" on screen, programmatically. My first idea was to use the mouse cursor itself as the pointer, and change its appearance as a red circle.
Then fake that. Create an application, perhaps of type LSUIElement, perhaps not, depending on the behavior you want. Create a borderless window (type NSBorderlessWindowMask) and fill it with a clear color. Set its window level high enough so that it floats over everything (using -[NSWindow setLevel:], though I can't think of what the best level would be off-hand), and draw into it.
It's true that you cannot set the cursor when you are not the foremost app. It's true that you cannot just scribble on the screen. But you can get the same effects if you're clever.
This behaviour is not provided by any APIs on Mac OS X. You would have to modify the resource files in the OS, and that's a very dangerous operation that could brick the target computer. You have to know what you're doing.
Are you trying to implement a theming app or something like that? What's your goal? If you tell us what you are trying to do, we may be able to suggest alternate approaches.
I need to create a SDI form with a formview that has two tabs, which encapsulate multiple dialogs as the tab content. But the form has to have a colored background.
And things like these makes me hate programming.
First, I tried CTabControl, via resource editor, tried different things, but the undocumented behavior and the quirks with no answers led me into a roadblock.
After many hours of searching, I found that there is a control called property sheet, which is actually what I need.
Some more searching later, I found that property sheet can even be actually embedded onto CFormView like so: http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/controls/propertysheet/article.php/c591
And that the dialog classes derived from CPropertyPage can be directly added as pages via AddPage method of CPropertySheet.
Great! Not quite so... Some of the controls didn't worked, and were not created, ran into weird asserts. Turns out the DS_CONTROL style was missing from the dialogs. Found it completely accidentaly on Link, no word about that on MSDN!!!! Property page must have: DS_3DLOOK | DS_CONTROL | WS_CHILD | WS_TABSTOP, and can have: DS_SHELLFONT | DS_LOCALEDIT | WS_CLIPCHILDREN styles! Not any other, which are created by default with resource editor. Sweet, super hidden information for software developers!
The quote in comments on that page: "OMG. That's where that behavior came from...
It turns out that the PlaySound API relied on that behavior when playing sounds on 64bit machines." by Larry Osterman, who as I understand works for Microsoft for 20 years, got me laughing out loud.
Anyway, fixed that, the dialog-controls(CPropertyPages) are created as expected now, and that part looks something remotely promising, but the next part with color is dead end again!
Normally you override WM_CTLCOLOR, check for control ID or hwnd and supply the necessary brush to set the color you need. Not quite so with CPropertySheet, the whole top row stays gray! For CTabCtrl it somehow works, for CPropertySheet it doesn't.
Why? Seems that the CPropertySheet is kinda embedded inside CTabControl or something, because if I override WM_ERASEBKGND, only the internal part changes the color.
Now it seems that there is a GetTabControl() method in the CPropertySheet, that returns the actual CTabCtrl* of the CPropertySheet. But since it's constructed internally, I can't find how to override it's WM_CTLCOLOR message processing.
There seems to be a way to subclass the windowproc, but after multiple tries I can't find any good source on how to do it. SubclassWindow doc on MSDN says: "The window must not already be attached to an MFC object when this function is called."?! What's that?
I tried creating a custom CCustomTabCtrl class based on CTabCtrl via MFC wizard, created an instance of it, called SubclassWindow from one of the CCustomPropertySheet handlers to override the internal CTabCtrl, but nothing works, mystical crashes deep inside MFC.
Tried setting WindowLong with GCL_HBRBACKGROUND for the internal CTabCtrl, nothing changed.
And worst of all, I can't find any sort of useful documentation or tutorials on the topic.
Most I can find is how to ownerdraw the tab control, but this is seriously wrong on so many ways, I want a standard control behavior minus background color, I don't want to support different color schemes, windows versions, IAccesible interfaces and all this stuff, and none of the ownerdraw samples I've seen can get even 10% of all the standard control behavior right. I have no illusion that I will create something better, I wont with the resources at hand.
I stumbled upon this thread, and I can't agree with the author more: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=169886&sid=aad002424e80121e514548d428cf09c6 owner draw controls are undocumented PITA, that are impossible to do right, and there is NULL information on MSDN to help.
So is there anything I have missed or haven't tried yet? How to change the top strip background color of the CPropertySheet? Anyone?
Your only option is to ownerdraw the tab control. It's not that hard. Well, it is frustrating because MFC doesn't tell you how to make the necessary Win32 calls.
In your CPropertySheet-derived class, overwrite OnInitDialog() and add:
GetTabControl()->ModifyStyle(0,TCS_OWNERDRAWFIXED);
This puts your CPropertySheet-derived class in charge of drawing the tab control. Add a handler for WM_DRAWITEM (OnDrawItem) and change backgroundColor and textColor to match whatever colors you wanted. Code for OnDrawItem follows:
void CPropSht::OnDrawItem(int nIDCtl, LPDRAWITEMSTRUCT lpDrawItemStruct)
{
if (ODT_TAB != lpDrawItemStruct->CtlType)
{
CPropertySheet::OnDrawItem(nIDCtl, lpDrawItemStruct);
return;
}
// prepare to draw the tab control
COLORREF backgroundColor = RGB(0,255,0);
COLORREF textColor = RGB(0,0,255);
CTabCtrl *c_Tab = GetTabControl();
// Get the current tab item text.
TCHAR buffer[256] = {0};
TC_ITEM tcItem;
tcItem.pszText = buffer;
tcItem.cchTextMax = 256;
tcItem.mask = TCIF_TEXT;
if (!c_Tab->GetItem(c_Tab->GetCurSel(), &tcItem )) return;
// draw it
CDC aDC;
aDC.Attach(lpDrawItemStruct->hDC);
int nSavedDC = aDC.SaveDC();
CBrush newBrush;
newBrush.CreateSolidBrush(backgroundColor);
aDC.SelectObject(&newBrush);
aDC.FillRect(&lpDrawItemStruct->rcItem, &newBrush);
aDC.SetBkMode(TRANSPARENT);
aDC.SetTextColor(textColor);
aDC.DrawText(tcItem.pszText, &lpDrawItemStruct->rcItem, DT_CENTER|DT_VCENTER|DT_SINGLELINE);
aDC.RestoreDC(nSavedDC);
aDC.Detach();
}
Thank you for this solution but...
The above solution works well with one tab, but when you have multiple tabs it seems rename the wrong tabs. I needed to change the if statement for GetItem to:
if (!c_Tab->GetItem(lpDrawItemStruct->itemID, &tcItem )) return;
Needed lpDrawItemStruct->itemID to get the tabs named correctly