DropDown combobox color

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Dear friends, any idea on how to change the foreground and background colors of a standard CBS_DROPDOWN (the one in which you can write) combobox (not the FWH one with a TGet on it)?

EMG

[Antonio Linares]

Enrico,

Do you mean using FWH code ? Or in pure C ?

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Any way will be fine.

EMG

[Antonio Linares]

Enrico,

Have a look to WM_CTLCOLORLISTBOX. It should be similar for a ComboBox.

Also, you have to consider that there is an Edit control (TGet in FWH) as a child of the combobox, so the combobox also has to answer to WM_CTLCOLORLISTBOX.

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Thanks to your idea I solved my problem this way:

Code: Select all

METHOD CtlColor( hWndChild, hDCChild ) CLASS TComboBox

   if lAnd( GetWindowLong( ::hWnd, GWL_STYLE ), CBS_DROPDOWN )
      SetTextColor( hDCChild, ::nClrText )
      SetBkColor( hDCChild, ::nClrPane )

      ::hBkBrush = CreateSolidBrush( ::nClrPane )

      return ::hBkBrush
   endif

return nil

EMG

[Antonio Linares]

Enrico,

Excellent, Master

What do you use ::hBkBrush for ? -you always call CreateSolidBrush()-

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Enrico,

Excellent, Master

What do you use ::hBkBrush for ? -you always call CreateSolidBrush()-

You are right! I have to call it only once, maybe inside Default() method (I already release it inside Destroy() method).

Thank you for pointed it out!

EMG

[Antonio Linares]

Enrico,

If you call CreateSolidBrush() always, then you can dinamically change the color of the control on the run.

[James Bott]

Antonio,

So, are you suggesting we just do:

return CreateSolidBrush( ::nClrPane )

instead?

James

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Enrico,

If you call CreateSolidBrush() always, then you can dinamically change the color of the control on the run.

Yes. But at the moment I don't need of this feature.

EMG

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Antonio,

So, are you suggesting we just do:

return CreateSolidBrush( ::nClrPane )

instead?

James

Almost. But that way you can't release the brush and this will cause a resource leakage. You need to store the handle and release it before create the new brush. And release it once more when the control is destroyed.

EMG

[James Bott]

Enrico,

Thanks for the explaination. This feature would be very useful if you wish to color the background different for required fields, then change it to white if the data is entered and vaild. You may remember me discussing this before.

James

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Yes, but please notice that you can already do this with FWH dropdown comboboxes as they have a TGet on them. My coloring problem was about standard Windows dropdown comboboxes.

EMG