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- WINCOLOR.EXE
-
-
-
- Richard Hale Shaw August, 1991 (Utilities)
-
-
- Purpose: WINCOLOR is the answer to all of Windows 3.0 Control Panel
- limitations. It lets you change all Windows' component colors you can change
- and view the impact of your modifications as you make them.
-
- Format: INSERT 1(14)--1 line
- WIN WINCOLOR
-
- Remarks: The Work Area, initially white, is used for the color you are
- presently mixing and/or using. This color can be modified at any time by
- adjusting the Red, Green, and Blue sliders, each of which inceases the value
- of its respective color from 000 (off) to 255 (full on). When all three
- colors are at maximum the result is white.
- The two Selected Color boxes show both the dithered and the pure forms
- of the currently selected color. For reasons known only to Microsoft, the ten
- Windows components labelled in red in Figure 1 use only pure colors (which
- appear in the right-hand Selected Color box). The remaining nine elements use
- the dithered shades. The 36 initially-white Custom Color squares are like
- their counterparts in the Control Panel color facility: you can use them as a
- palette on which to store any colors you wish.
- The four groups (Window, Menu, Misc., and Button) of labelled
- rectangles each contain the current color of a Windows element. Thus, the
- first rectangle in the Window section shows the color of window text and the
- rectangle below it contains the window frame color. Note that the items in
- the Misc. group refer to components used throughout Windows: Grayed Text is
- for the listing of disabled (unselectable) items; the desktop background is
- the color of the desktop if you don't have a bitmap loaded. The application
- workspace is the color of surface on which child windows reside in a Multiple
- Document Interface (MDI) application such as the Program Manager.
- Changing the color of a Windows component could hardly be easier. You
- select a color from any visible box--from the Work Area, one of the Custom
- Color rectangles, or a Windows component rectangle--by clicking on it with the
- left mouse button. The Selected Color boxes change to reflect your current
- choice. You paint the selected color, again onto any box, by right-clicking
- on it with the mouse. That's all there's to it--assuming, of course, that
- you haven't swapped your mouse buttons!
- To paint a color into the Work Area there's even a short-cut
- alternative to the left-click, move, right-click procedure: just left-double-
- click on the desired color. As you modify the colors in the Work Area with
- the horizontal scroll bars the Selected Color squares will track the changes.
- When you see what you want, simply right click on the labeled component box
- you want to assume that color.
- When you're ready to see what a particular color combination looks
- like overall, press the Set button. Set changes the color of all Windows
- components to reflect those displayed in WINCOLOR's component rectangles.
- Even WINCOLOR's component colors will change.
- If you like the colors you've chosen and want to use them in the
- future, press Save. Save updates the color settings in WINCOLOR's private
- profile, WINCO-LOR.INI. (This file is created in your Win-dows directory when
- you install WINCO-LOR.) If you don't like the decor you've selected, press the
- Restore button. This resets your Windows colors to those in ef-fect when
- WINCOLOR first came up (if you've haven't previously saved any chang-es) or to
- those you last saved in WINCO-LOR.INI. Note: Pressing Save will not make the
- color changes permanent in the Windows interface because the color set-tings
- are not saved to your WIN.INI file. To do that, you'll have to select the Up-
- date WIN.INI option, discussed later on.
- A summary of WINCOLOR's commands and operations can be invoked via the
- Help button.