"Function List" current function highlighting is too light?

Alan Kilborn

I wonder if this color under discussion is chosen by some setting in Windows?

andrecool-68

@Alan-Kilborn
Personalization
Window color
Additional design options
Highlighted menu item

andrecool-68

@Alan-Kilborn Inactive highlight color #F0F0F0. I can’t find how this color can change.

Alan Kilborn

@andrecool-68 said in "Function List" current function highlighting is too light?:

Inactive highlight color

Yea, that’s the one that I’m concerned with.
In the Function List, it’s just too hard to see to be useful at a glance.
Sure, if you’re really putting in effort to see it, you can…but that seems to somewhat defeat the purpose.

andrecool-68

@Alan-Kilborn Tested with all the color settings, but I can’t determine anything))

guy038

Hi, @alan-kilborn, @andrecool-68 and All,

Yeeeeah, I found the right parameter ! At least…, in Win XP ! Starting with the @andrecool-68 indications :

Right-click on an empty zone of screen and choose the Poprerties option
Click on the penultimate tab Appearance
Click on the Advanced Settings button, at the bottom right of the dialog
In the drop-down list Element, select the item 3D Objects

The present and default color 1 has RGB values 236, 233, 216, which are, exactly, the hex values ECE9D8, given in my previous post !

IMPORTANT : I don’t know if the 3D objets item is still present in Windows 7, 8 and 10 !

Best Regards,

guy038

PeterJones

@guy038 ,

Win 10 got rid of that dialog completely (it may have been Win8 that did it – but I confirmed via SO that it was a change sometime between Win7 and Win10).

However, \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors is where at least Win7 stored the results of that dialog. I cannot identify any from that key which might correspond to 3D objects.

Could you look in the registry at that location and see whether you have entries that don’t exist in the Win10 screenshot, and/or whether you can see which entry changes when you change the 3D Objects > color 1? (it will probably require refreshing the registry view, or reloading regedit between changes)

Looking at the numbers, 240 is 0xF0, so for my system, where that is shaded grey, it might be one of the ButtonFace, Menu, or MenuBar colors… but I don’t know for sure. The SO article mentioned that you might have to reboot for changes to the registry-only version to take place (though log out/in might do it). However, I make no guarantees whether or not it will. I have changed those three to red, green, and blue, respectively; when I hit a stopping point in a few minutes, I’ll probably reboot to see what happens – and whether I can see those change or not.

PeterJones

So, after starting the reboot, then playing a game of Scrabble with my family, I came back to see this pretty picture:

I had changed ButtonFace from 240 240 240 (grey, above) to 255 0 0 (bright red). The green underline came from changing Menu to 0 255 0 (bright green). I cannot see what has been changed by MenuBar being changed to 0 0 255 (bright blue).

Oh, there, MenuBar appears to affect the “active button” highlight color:
In the SaveAs, it appears to be the main highlight:

But other dialogs (like Plugins Admin) seem to use their normal colors, I think.

Unfortunately, changing the ButtonFace seems to be a pretty drastic change for @Alan-Kilborn’s purposes, especially with the number of items it affects – many of which you really want a light background. You might be able to get away with making it dark enough to be more visible, without ruining other things… but no guarantees.

PeterJones

No, the blue active-button highlight was the wrong shade, and persisted even after I changed MenuBar to 255 0 0 (bright red).

The good news is, it just took logging out and back in – rather than a full reboot – to change ButtonFace to 224 224 224 for a slightly darker grey, and Menu back to default 240 240 240 (don’t need the green underline)

The ButtonFace = 224 224 224 looks like it’s more noticeable, while not being annoyingly darker on the other instances than it usually is. But it’s still noticeably darker in those instances, like the save dialog.

I’ll stick with normals. Whether @Alan-Kilborn wants to go that route is up to him.

(And I will justify this as still Notepad++ related rather than just Windows related because we were trying to figure out specifically which color setting in Windows was affecting that aspect of Notepad++ :-)

andrecool-68

@PeterJones
Try to call this window with this command:
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl,Advanced,@Advanced

guy038

Hi, @alan-kilborn, @andrecool-68, @peterjones and All,

Peter, you’re right ! The color of current function, in the Function List panel, seems to be controlled from the colors of the ButtonFace key !

Here is my \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors, on my Win XP laptop :

As you can see, Peter, only two keys ( ButtonFace and MenuBar ) have colors 236, 233, 216, in my Win XP configuration

We can see that the different keys are always the same, between win XP and Win 10! ! But, strangely, no reference to a 3D Objects key, seems to be visible in registry ?

Best Regards,

guy038

PeterJones

@andrecool-68 ,

Nope, that just launches , which doesn’t allow setting the individual colors.

@guy038 ,

Nice to know that same key works on both WinXP and Win10 for controlling it. My guess is that the “button” is the default “3d object” in old windows nomenclature, and they just stuck with that naming convention, even as things changed through the decades.

Alan Kilborn

@PeterJones said in "Function List" current function highlighting is too light?:

Nice to know that same key works on both WinXP and Win10 for controlling it.

I guess having WinXP still around does indeed have some usefulness! :-)

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn

or by using a dark theme :-D

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse

by using a dark theme

Well now, THERE’s some contrast!

But I’m confused, is that your display when you’ve just clicked on something in the Function List, or is that merely the function you are in as you are navigating the editor window? (Neither appears to be the case from the data shown?)

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn

In this screenshot the focus was at the editor and I was moving the caret.
This is how it looks like when the function list has the focus and an item is selected

Alan Kilborn

I finally got some time to look deeper into the responses here. Thanks to everyone for their input.

Peter said:

I’ll stick with normals. Whether @Alan-Kilborn wants to go that route is up to him.

I took Peter’s “advice” and changed my ButtonFace to (224, 224, 224). This indeed makes the “inactive-but-inside” function in the list have better noticeability, without having any other negatives elsewhere in the Notepad++ (or Windows) UI.

I’m keeping that setting! :-)

PeterJones

This post is deleted!

Alan Kilborn

More on the topic of this thread is found HERE.