HOWTO: Changing Background Color of a Dialog Box Using ATL

• The Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL) 3.0

SUMMARY

When creating dialog boxes in ATL 3.0, you can change the background color that is used without much effort. This article shows you how to change the background color for dialog boxes in ATL 3.0.

Basically, you need to handle the WM_CTLCOLORDLG message for the dialog box. You can do this by adding an entry for this message in the message map and returning the handle to new brush with desired color from this handler.

MORE INFORMATION

Here are the steps for changing the color of a dialog box in ATL.

1. Add a member variable m_hDialogBrush of type HBRUSH to your dialog box class.




    HBRUSH m_hDialogBrush; 

2. Create brush with the desired color in dialog boxes constructor, and destroy it in the destructor.




    CColorDlg()
    {
      //this will create a blue brush 
      //could use GetSysColorBrush() instead if want to use a system brush
      m_hDialogBrush = CreateSolidBrush(RGB(0, 0, 255));
    }

    ~CColorDlg()
    {
        DeleteObject(m_hDialogBrush);
    } 

3. Add a message map entry for WM_CTLCOLORDLG as shown in the following.




BEGIN_MSG_MAP(CColorDlg)
    MESSAGE_HANDLER(WM_INITDIALOG, OnInitDialog)
    MESSAGE_HANDLER(WM_CTLCOLORDLG, OnCtlColorDlg) //Add this macro.
    COMMAND_ID_HANDLER(IDOK, OnOK)
    COMMAND_ID_HANDLER(IDCANCEL, OnCancel)
END_MSG_MAP() 

4. Add a OnCtlDialog member function to your dialog class like the code below. OnCtlDialog is handler for the WM_CTLCOLORDLG message.




    LRESULT OnCtlColorDlg(UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam, BOOL& bHandled)
    {
        return (long) m_hDialogBrush;
    } 

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q74043 HOWTO: Change the Color of an Edit Control

Q98201 HOWTO: Change Dialog Box Background Color in MFC 2.0 or Later

Q103786 HOWTO: Change Window Background Color with Foundation Classes

Q117778 HOWTO: Change the Background Color of an MFC Edit Control

Q132080 HOWTO: Change the Color of an MFC Child Control Class

© Microsoft Corporation 1999, All Rights Reserved.
Contributions by Sreedhar Pelluru, Microsoft Corporation

Additional query words: ATL color dialog howto

Keywords : kbATLWC kbDlg KbUIDesign kbVC600 kbATL300 kbDSupport kbGrpMFCATL
Version : WINDOWS:3.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto