Changing Help's Default Color Scheme

Because Windows Help is a standard Windows-based application, users can modify its default appearance the same way they modify the look of Windows—by using the Control Panel Colors setting to change their screen colors. Control Panel lets users change the color of the standard Help window elements: title bar, menu bar, button bar, scroll bars, window background, window text, and window border. In addition to these standard window elements, Help has two special elements: hot-spot text and the Help startup screen. By default, text hot spots in Help are green and the startup screen is blue. Windows Help provides custom WIN.INI entries that users can use to modify these two visual elements of Help.

Note:

Generally, applications should not change any of the WIN.INI settings described in this section because they are global settings designed for end users. They are not provided so that an application’s setup program can edit the WIN.INI file and insert or update these settings during installation of their product. If an application wants to change the way hot spots appear in Help, it should use the authoring procedures described in Chapter 8, “Creating Links and Hot Spots.”

Changing Hot-Spot Colors

If users want to change the way hot spots appear in Help, they can edit the Windows WIN.INI file and specify custom hot-spot colors. Help supports the following WIN.INI entries:

[Windows Help]
JumpColor=(RRR, GGG, BBB)
PopUpColor=(RRR, GGG, BBB)
MacroColor=(RRR, GGG, BBB)
IFJumpColor=(RRR, GGG, BBB)
IFPopUpColor=(RRR, GGG, BBB)

RRR, GGG, and BBB represent the red, green, and blue (RGB) components of the hot-spot color. These color values can be a number from 0 to 255. The meaning of each entry is explained in the following table.

To change the color of Help hot spots

1.1.Open the WIN.INI file in Notepad or some other text editor.

2.2.Go to the [Windows Help] section.

3.3.Type one or more of the hot-spot color entries.

Note You can specify just the JumpColor entry to change the color of both jump and pop-up hot spots.

4.4.Save the WIN.INI file and exit the text editor.

5.5.Restart Windows to have your changes take effect.

When you open Help again, your hot-spot colors will be set to the colors you specified.

Overriding Author-Defined Hot-Spot Colors

As Chapter 8 explains, Help authors can also change the color of hot-spot text. These author-defined colors may cause problems for some users (those with gas plasma VGA screens, for example), making it difficult or even impossible to read the hot-spot text. If the Help file contains an author-defined color for hot spots, the above entries will have no effect. To override an author-defined hot-spot color, users can type the following entry in the WIN.INI file:

[Windows Help]
Colors=NONE

If Help finds this entry in the WIN.INI file, it uses the system default colors for foreground and background colors, regardless of how the Help file was authored.

Chapter 8, “Creating Links and Hot Spots,” explains how Help authors can change the default appearance of hot spots.

Changing Help's Startup Screen Colors

When you start the Windows Help application without opening a Help file, Help displays a startup logo that identifies itself. If users want to change the starting and ending colors used in the Help logo screen, they can edit the WIN.INI file. Help supports the following WIN.INI entries:

[Windows Help]
LogoStart=(RRR, GGG, BBB)
LogoEnd=(RRR, GGG, BBB)

As with the hot-spot entries, you specify the RGB color you want for the logo screen color on the right side of the equal sign (a number from 0 to 255). The meaning of each entry is explained in the following table.