C / C++ / MFC

Background color: dialog box vs. property page

11-Mar-12 16:39

Have you initialized COM (using something like CoInitialize() or OleInitialize())?

john5632 wrote:
szPath= path;

Should you be calling SHGetPathFromIDList() here?

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David Crow9-Mar-12 5:33

9-Mar-12 5:33

I've got a dialog-based app that has two buttons: one button spawns a modal dialog, the other button spawns a property sheet (with multiple pages). The background color of the dialog is RGB(240,240,240). The background color of the property pages are RGB(255,255,255). Why the difference? I know there are a few settings in the .rc file that need to be changed when creating a property page, but so far none of the ones I've changed have made a difference.

Richard Andrew x649-Mar-12 5:50

Richard Andrew x64

9-Mar-12 5:50

It's not clear what you want to do. Do you want to make them both the same, and no matter how you adjust the RC file, they don't come out the same?

The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.

David Crow9-Mar-12 6:00

9-Mar-12 6:00

Yes, I'd like them both to be the same as the dialog. I can add a WM_CTLCOLOR handler to each of the property pages, but that seems like overkill.

Richard MacCutchan9-Mar-12 20:55

Richard MacCutchan

9-Mar-12 20:55

These are the default colours for the controls in question. If you want them changed then you will need to subclass them and add your own handler for background paint events.

Unrequited desire is character building. OriginalGriff
I'm sitting here giving you a standing ovation - Len Goodman

David Crow11-Mar-12 11:13

11-Mar-12 11:13

Hi Richard. I'm not wanting to change the color of the controls, only the background color of the property page. I can do this in the page's WM_CTLCOLOR handler, but it just didn't feel right. Since CPropertyPage is derived from CDialog, I guess I was just expecting them to have the same background color.

Richard MacCutchan11-Mar-12 22:23

Richard MacCutchan

11-Mar-12 22:23

DavidCrow wrote:
Since CPropertyPage is derived from CDialog,

And its 'parent' CPropertySheet[^] derives from CWnd, which is probably why they take the colour that they do. I agree it's somewhat confusing, but I'm sure Microsoft can explain why they did it this way.

Unrequited desire is character building. OriginalGriff
I'm sitting here giving you a standing ovation - Len Goodman

Strange "resource editor" issue

Randor 10-Mar-12 3:27

Randor

10-Mar-12 3:27

David,

I don't understand your question. Those colors have always been a part of your window theme[^]. Microsoft window controls use the GetSysColor function[^] for choosing colors for the controls associated with the default window classes.

DavidCrow wrote:
The background color of the dialog is RGB(240,240,240).

I am not on your computer so I do not know what window theme you are using. However for the last 20 or so years the dialogs have always used the GetSysColor(COLOR_3DFACE) for the dialog background.

DavidCrow wrote:
The background color of the property pages are RGB(255,255,255).

Again, this has always been dependent on your windows theme and the property pages are probably using GetSysColor(COLOR_WINDOW) which happens to be 255,255,255 (or a softer shade of white) in most of the window themes I have seen.

Who are you and what have you done with the real David Crow? We demand that you release him. Big Grin | :-D

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

David Crow8-Mar-12 10:13

8-Mar-12 10:13

This is mixture of a C and a Visual Studio (2008 SP1) question. On a dialog I have a static control that is 1 DLU tall (I have to use Notepad to obtain this height) by several DLUs wide. It is acting as a horizontal line. It has an ID of IDC_STATIC_LINE. When I do certain things on that dialog (e.g., add other controls, move controls around, change tab order), the static control reverts back to 8 DLUs tall. Any ideas why?

- DC

modified 9-Mar-12 9:22am.

Maximilien8-Mar-12 10:33

Maximilien

8-Mar-12 10:33

I've never seen that.

(in the resource editor)
Is it possible that it gets "glued" to some guidelines ?

Check in notepad if there's a "GUIDELINES" section in the resource file, and remove all the section.

for example :

C++

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// DESIGNINFO
//

#ifdef APSTUDIO_INVOKED
GUIDELINES DESIGNINFO
BEGIN
    IDD_ABOUTBOX, DIALOG
    BEGIN
        LEFTMARGIN, 7
        RIGHTMARGIN, 163
        TOPMARGIN, 7
        BOTTOMMARGIN, 55
    END

    IDD_TEST_DIALOG, DIALOG
    BEGIN
        LEFTMARGIN, 7
        RIGHTMARGIN, 313
        VERTGUIDE, 40
        VERTGUIDE, 84
        VERTGUIDE, 226
        VERTGUIDE, 258
        TOPMARGIN, 7
        BOTTOMMARGIN, 193
    END
END
#endif    // APSTUDIO_INVOKED

Watched code never compiles.

David Crow8-Mar-12 10:58

8-Mar-12 10:58

The control is just out in the open, all by itself. It's several DLUs away from any edge.

Richard MacCutchan8-Mar-12 21:27

Richard MacCutchan

8-Mar-12 21:27

What is the actual definition of the control as it exists in your .rc file? It may help if you paste the entire dialog definition here.

Unrequited desire is character building. OriginalGriff
I'm sitting here giving you a standing ovation - Len Goodman

David Crow9-Mar-12 2:29

9-Mar-12 2:29

Here it is. The 1 in the highlighted line will change to an 8 on occassion.

IDD_USERBUTTONS_PAGE DIALOGEX 0, 0, 274, 298
STYLE DS_SETFONT | DS_MODALFRAME | DS_FIXEDSYS | WS_POPUP | WS_CAPTION | WS_SYSMENU
CAPTION "Buttons"
FONT 8, "MS Shell Dlg", 400, 0, 0x1
BEGIN
    PUSHBUTTON      "Load New User defaults",IDC_BTN_LOAD,94,7,86,14
    LTEXT           "",IDC_STATIC_LINE,7,27,260,1,SS_SUNKEN
    LTEXT           "Current buttons:",IDC_STATIC,7,34,55,8
    ...
END

Maximilien9-Mar-12 2:47

Maximilien

9-Mar-12 2:47

In VS2008.

just pasted that line in one of our dialog and I observe the same behaviour; and when I edited the resource in the resource editor, I cannot resize it to one line (even after setting the SS_SIMPLE property.

Watched code never compiles.

Randor 9-Mar-12 3:15

Randor

9-Mar-12 3:15

David,

You failed to mention which version of the Microsoft IDE you were using. Therefore I have tested both (fully patched) VS2008-SP1 and VS2010-SP1 and do not experience the behavior you are describing. My test method is to simply create a default MFC dialog project... paste your dialog resource fragment into the .rc file and #define all of the control ID within the resource header. I am able to add/subtract controls and modify the tab order and the static control keeps its height.

It looks like I have added 24 HotFixes to the VS2008 along with latest SP1. You might want to browse all of the HotFixes to see if this issue has been previously addressed: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads[^]

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

David Crow9-Mar-12 3:26

9-Mar-12 3:26

Randor wrote:
...and the static control keeps its height.

Mine did too for quite a while. Out of the blue, however, it would revert back to its original size.

This is also an issue with VS6. I guess ~10 years is not enough time to get it fixed!

Randor 9-Mar-12 9:34

Randor

9-Mar-12 9:34

David,

How do you know it is a bug? Considering that you have declared a static control as LTEXT (left aligned text) it makes perfect sense for the IDE to resize it so it will correctly draw the default system font. I would suggest that you try changing from LTEXT to CONTROL with the SS_ETCHEDHORZ property set. If you are not comfortable modifying the .rc file directly... from the toolbox in the IDE this is actually "Picture Control" with the "Etched Horz" set to true.

If after making this change you see the same behavior then I would agree that it is a bug.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

David Crow9-Mar-12 10:01

9-Mar-12 10:01

Randor wrote:
How do you know it is a bug?

What else could it be?

Randor wrote:
Considering that you have declared a static control as LTEXT (left aligned text) it makes perfect sense for the IDE to resize...

The IDE should never make such an assumption. If I want a control to be a certain size, so be it. I can make edit controls too small all day long and assign a huge font to them, all without the IDE's or Windows' interference.

If the IDE was trying to be helpful, why would it not resize a static control that is 8 DLUs high with the SS_SUNKEN style? The default dialog font will not fit in such a control without the bottom of the text getting cropped. You have to make the control 1-2 DLUs taller.

Randor wrote:
If after making this change you see the same behavior then I would agree that it is a bug.

I put the change in place. It may take a bit for the problem to surface, if at all.

Randor 9-Mar-12 10:42

Randor

9-Mar-12 10:42

Hi David,

Well I have never seen anyone attempt to use a static control in such a way. A single pixel is not even enough room to draw the LTEXT SS_SUNKEN static control. I suspect that the IDE is attempting to do something intelligent and the result is failing to meet your expectations. If you believe that this is a bug then I would suggest that you report it over at http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio[^] and perhaps one of the guys on the Visual Studio team will explain the logic behind it.

The sunken border effect that you were looking to achieve should probably be done with the CONTROL static with the SS_ETCHEDHORZ set. Now that you have made this change I suspect that the problem you were having will go away. Please update the forum thread if the problem reappears.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

David Crow9-Mar-12 11:58

9-Mar-12 11:58

Randor wrote:
Well I have never seen anyone attempt to use a static control in such a way.

That's the way I learned how to do it way back in the early 90s (with Petzold's book). Old habits are hard to break. Back then MS did not have a resource editor. I routinely used Notepad, and then started using the one from Borland.

Randor 9-Mar-12 13:47

Randor

9-Mar-12 13:47

Hi David,

It sounds like we are around the same age. I was also programming with C/C++ back in the mid 80's and early 90's.

DavidCrow wrote:
Back then MS did not have a resource editor.

Sure they did. The resource editor back then was called 'App Studio'. I still have my copy of Visual Studio 1.0 and I also have installed in a VM image. I made a screenshot of the resource editor for you.

Screenshot of the Visual Studio 1.0 resource editor[^]

DavidCrow wrote:
I routinely used Notepad, and then started using the one from Borland.

I was mostly doing Unix (SunOS) development back then... the closest thing we had to notepad was pico (although most Unix C/C++ software engineers used emacs/vim). I moved permanently to Linux development around 1994/1995. Windows programming was only a hobby born out of curiosity at that time. I did not begin doing full-time Windows development until around 1999/2000 soon after RedHat bailed out of desktop development when they had a dispute with the Gnome developers.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune