Setting the background color of my main window

I'm having difficulty setting it to an "opportune" color. How can I set it to the "default" of the user at the time? For instance, on my WinXP system I have the silver setting on it so the normal background color against the LTGRAY color looks terrible! Hmmm...I guess I'm looking to set the background color to the color of the menu. Is that possible? Thanks!

i think these might help

DWORD GetSysColor(
int nIndex // display element
);

BOOL WINAPI SetSysColors(
int cElements, // number of elements to change
CONST INT *lpaElements, // address of array of elements
CONST COLORREF *lpaRgbValues // address of array of RGB values
);

though i doubt you want to set the whols system colors, you might get some idea from this exerpt from the WNDCLASS struct

hbrBackground
Handle to the class background brush. This member can be a handle to the physical brush to be used for painting the background, or it can be a color value. A color value must be one of the following standard system colors (the value 1 must be added to the chosen color). If a color value is given, you must convert it to one of the following HBRUSH types:

COLOR_ACTIVEBORDER
COLOR_ACTIVECAPTION
COLOR_APPWORKSPACE
COLOR_BACKGROUND
COLOR_BTNFACE
COLOR_BTNSHADOW
COLOR_BTNTEXT
COLOR_CAPTIONTEXT
COLOR_GRAYTEXT
COLOR_HIGHLIGHT
COLOR_HIGHLIGHTTEXT
COLOR_INACTIVEBORDER
COLOR_INACTIVECAPTION
COLOR_MENU
COLOR_MENUTEXT
COLOR_SCROLLBAR
COLOR_WINDOW
COLOR_WINDOWFRAME
COLOR_WINDOWTEXT

The system automatically deletes class background brushes when the class is freed. An application should not delete these brushes, because a class may be used by multiple instances of an application.

When this member is NULL, an application must paint its own background whenever it is requested to paint in its client area. To determine whether the background must be painted, an application can either process the WM_ERASEBKGND message or test the fErase member of the PAINTSTRUCT structure filled by the BeginPaint function.

So what you are saying to do is something like:

Code:

---

wndclass.hbrBackground = COLOR_MENU;

---

to set the classes background to the color of the menu, for instance? Is that what I would do? Thanks...

i didn't realize this till to late but,
actually its unfortunate by XP actually doesn't use the system colors when your in skin mode... so i have no clue as to how you would get the skin color...

so you stuck with

wc.hbrBackground = CreateSolidBrush(RGB(rrr, ggg, bbb));

the Menu color is a gradient from 244,244,238 to 224,226,235 the last number varies slightly up and down the height of its draw area.

i recommend playing around with the last one...

::edit:: unfortunatly this isn't an excellent solution since the user may not be using the silver skin...

Hmmm...maybe I should just make the background white or something neutral...

i always go:

wc.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)(COLOR_BTNFACE + 1);