Can someone tell me if there is a way to change the background and character
collor of a disabled CEdit control. (The gray characters on a gray
background are not always readable) I look rather to change the property of
the CEdit control than getting a DC for every control and repainting my
controls.

Greatings
Jean Paul

I think you'll need to handle the WM_CTLCOLOR (CTLCOLOR_STATIC)
message for a disabled edit control.

Dave
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You can use the OnCtlColor() event to tell the OS to use different colors for a specific window, but
for a disabled edit box the OS will ignore the text color you return and use the system color
COLOR_GRAYTEXT instead. It will use the background and text background colors though, so you could
lighten the background instead of darkening the text to get a better contrast.

However, this is a system incompatible hack and you really should stick with whatever colors the
user has defined for the system to stay compatible with the OS accessibility features. For some
visually impaired folks, like me, the font colors, types, and sizes we choose for the system are
very important to our ability to use the applications effectively.

The disabled flag is intended to be used for an edit box that should not be selected, read, or
written. If what you actually want is to just disable the write or edit ability, but allow the user
to read, select, or copy the contents, then what you want to use is the SetReadOnly() method which
sets the ES_READONLY flag on the edit box. This will still gray the background, but it will use the
normal text color and the user can select and copy the contents.

There are some application developers that do not like the gray background of the readonly edit box.
What they do is to use the OnCtlColor() event to change the color of any readonly edit box in their
application to a normal window background (COLOR_WINDOW) and the disabled color for the text
(COLOR_GRAYTEXT). This creates less of a visual discontinuity when the edit box changes state but
still clearly indicates the current state.

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www.mooremvp.freeserve.co.uk/Win32/w32tip45.htm

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Bob Moore [WinSDK MVP]
http://www.mooremvp.freeserve.co.uk/
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Dear Mr. Bob,

I tested your nice code at
[http://www.mooremvp.freeserve.co.uk/Win32/w32tip11.htm]
to draw a background bitmap.

But it does not work. I mean, the dialog never call any OnEraseBkgnd at all, and
when I call this method my self from the OnInitDlg, also nothing occures!!!

Could you please explain it to me? It is very important for me.

Please make a cc to my Email.

Regards

Tarek

Launch ClassWizard, select your dialog class and click the "Class
Info" tab. At the bottom of that tab you will find a combo marked
"message filter". In that combo, select "Window". Then go back to the
Message Map and you'll find you can create a handler for the
WM_ERASEBKGND message, which is where my code goes.

Just calling the code on the fly won't work because windows will
promptly undo the effect when it repaints. You must create a handler
as described above.

When I get a moment, I'll modify the code tip to make this clearer.

--
Bob Moore [WinSDK MVP]
http://www.mooremvp.freeserve.co.uk/
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