WINDOWS COLORS EXPLAINED: a guide

When you proceed to edit your .3DC file, or your .THEME file, you will find several different color selections. All of these correspond to some part of the Windows GUI that you see every day. This guide seeks to provide the editor with explanations for all of those color options, so that s/he may make informed color choices.



THE ACTIVE CAPTION BAR

• ActiveTitle: one of two colors, this is the left gradient.
• GradientActiveTitle: one of two colors, this is the right gradient.
• TitleText: active caption text color.

THE inACTIVE CAPTION BAR

• InactiveTitle: one of two colors, this is the left gradient.
• GradientInactiveTitle: one of two colors, this is the right gradient.
• InactiveTitleText: inactive caption text color.

TOOLTIP

• InfoWindow: the color of the tooltip itself (default is a light yellow.)
• InfoText: tooltip text color.

WINDOW 3D COLORS

• ButtonFace: main button color
• ButtonLight: top-outside
• ButtonHilight: top-inside
• ButtonShadow: bottom-inside
• ButtonDkShadow: bottom-outside

Click to view attachment


OTHER WINDOW COLORS

• ActiveBorder: border of the active window, drawn inside the 3D colors.
• InactiveBorder: border of the inactive window, drawn inside the 3D colors.
• MenuBar: color of the menu bar (file, edit, view, tools, help, etc...)
• Menu: color of a menu, overrides the ButtonFace attribute.
• WindowFrame: typically the single line border seen around active buttons.
• Scrollbar: color of the scrollbar TRACK, scrollbar itself drawn using 3D Button attributes.
• Window: main background color inside a window, typically white.
• ButtonAlternateFace: (unknown attribute...)

Click to view attachment


BACKGROUND & WORKSPACE

• Background: desktop area, with no wallpaper applied.
• AppWorkspace: background color in an application that may contain windows, such as Photoshop.

SELECTION

• Hilight: background color of a selection.
• MenuHilight: background color of a selection on a menu.
• HilightText: text color of the selection.

TEXT COLORS

• WindowText: the main text inside a window.
• MenuText: shown on the MenuBar and Menus.
• ButtonText: shown on 3D Buttons.
• GrayText: a menu item that is inactive.
• HotTrackingColor: active text, such as a link.

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I decided to post this guide because I have been asked questions about my Windows Classic themes. It took a bit of trial and error for me to figure out some of these colors, especially the stranger ones like WindowFrame. I don't use the 3DCC application, and prefer to just directly edit the Windows .theme file, since it achieves the same effect.

NOTE: For editing the .theme file, you can rearrange the attributes listed above to your liking. The default arrangement in the .theme file itself is a little haphazard, and does not group like items together (all of the Windows 3D colors, for example.)


Enjoy

Great article and thanks for taking the time to write it out so thoroughly. I have just one question though and it's a problem I've noticed while tinkering in Stylebuilder - not exactly the same thing as the above article but I thought you might be able to point me in the right direction.

Do you happen to know which setting is used for the menu separator? I've noticed with my C# programs that it renders them in a beige color while I've set every known color setting to the a darker color. Any help would be appreciated mate and I hope I didn't get too far off topic with the question.

Nice guide!
Would someone know why when apply a windowblinds skins, which is suppose to change my tooltip black with white text, doesn't apply to tooltips within firefox? I keep having to go into these settings and changing it to something more friendly with FF, FF doesn't seem to show the white text, It's always black I believe, so the tooltips within FF are black on black!
Or, how can I permanently apply the light background, black text that I keep having to revert to? I'd imagine it's windowblinds that's applying it, so I'd have to do something there......

@ Sranshaft: The menu separator in typically made of two colors from the windows 3D colors, ButtonHilight and ButtonShadow. A Visual Style also has a bitmap for a separator under separator.BMP, and separatorvert.BMP, so you might try editing those as well.