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Hi,



When using the Office 2007 Obsidian theme, which is our prefered one, the area behind the quick access bar is almost black.  But our icons are designed for use on a light background and are really hard to make out.  The ribbon itself still has a light background, so designing icons that show up well on both is somewhat difficult.



I notice that when the window loses focus, it sometimes goes grey, and then the icons are clearly visible.  I would suggest that just for the QA area this lighter grey is always used (keeping dark grey for the rest of the title bar).  Is there a straight forward way for us to make this happen?



I say "sometimes goes grey" above because I’m noticing right now that the window title and QA stay very dark when the window loses focus, until another window is dragged over it and dragged off again, causing a redraw which draws in the lighter grey.  So it’s not redrawing properly when the window loses focus.  This is using your Office demo by the way, not my own code.  I’ve seen a lot of redraw issues using Prof-UIS, which worries me.

Dark background when window has focus, icons are hard to see:





Light background when window loses focus (if it redraws correctly), icons are easier to make out:

Rob.

You should create and use your own CExtPaintManagerOffice2007_R2_Obsidian-derived class:

class CYourPaintManger : public CExtPaintManagerOffice2007_R2_Obsidian
{
public:
            CYourPaintManger()
            {
                        . . .
            }
};

. . .

VERIFY( g_PaintManager.InstallPaintManager( new CYourPaintManger ) );

The constructor of your paint manager class should load skinned bitmap parts for loading lighter version of the quick access toolbar background. The parent class constructor will load all the default bitmaps. The constructor of your class will re-load your custom bitmaps. Please take a look at the content of the .../Prof-UIS/Include/Resources/Res2007/ folder. It contains collection of bitmaps for Office 2007 themes. All the bitmaps have names similar to their identifiers. The IDB_EXT_2007_RIBBON_NC_CORNER_ACTIVE_LEFT_R3_OBSIDIAN.bmp and IDB_EXT_2007_RIBBON_NC_CORNER_ACTIVE_RIGHT_R3_OBSIDIAN.bmp files are defining dark quick access toolbar background which you would like to make lighter. Please find where the IDB_EXT_2007_RIBBON_NC_CORNER_ACTIVE_LEFT_R3_OBSIDIAN and IDB_EXT_2007_RIBBON_NC_CORNER_ACTIVE_RIGHT_R3_OBSIDIAN bitmaps are loaded in the constructor of the CExtPaintManagerOffice2007_R2_Obsidian class. Copy loading code into the constructor of your paint manager class and load these bitmaps from your lighter bitmap resources.

Please note, the CExtPaintManagerOffice2007_R2_Obsidian class uses different bitmaps and painting code for quick access toolbar background in the skinned caption area and in the DWM based glass area of Windows Vista. But in case of Vista the background is enough light and you probably will not need to change it.