BackColor Property

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Defined By: Window

Description:

Determines the background color of an object to be the system default color or a different color using the color palette, the RGB function, or QBColor function in code.

Settings:

Phoenix uses the RGB color scheme provided with the MS Windows environment. The optional =color argument can be specified using one of the following:

the RGB functions in code

the QBColor functions in code

a long integer constant, (hexadecimal recommended)

Details:

The default background color for forms and controls is selected using the Control Panel supplied with the Window's environment. A value of -1 for BackColor indicates the form or control will display the system default color. You can override this default by setting the BackColor property to a value other than -1.

You can begin each BackColor expression by naming the specific form or control whose background you want to change. If you omit the form or control name, Phoenix will change the background color of the current form or control.

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Caution: If you enter a value for the BackColor property on Form or PictureBox objects, it erases all graphics and print output, including the persistent bitmap.

The easiest way to understand how a long constant is converted to color is to consider the hexadecimal format of the constant, e.g. &HFFFFFF. Only the least-significant three bytes are important, with each byte specifying the intensity of one of the red, green, or blue components of the color. The least significant byte is the red component, the next byte (second from the right) is the green component, and the next (third from the right) is the blue component. This is the same as saying &H0000FF is bright red, &H00FF00 is bright green, and &HFF0000 is bright blue. The most significant byte should generally be zero, except when specifying -1 (&HFFFFFFFF) to indicate the form or control should use the default color.

To get a hexadecimal value for any of the 16 colors standard in Windows, you can use the QBColor function. The QBColor function requires you to specify the integer color number used in versions of Microsoft BASIC.

The RGB function, like QBColor, returns a hexadecimal value for colors. The color specified by an RGB function, however, is the result of combining a specified intensity of red, green, and blue. The value for the red, green, and blue arguments ranges from 0 to 255 (&HFF). The RGB function combines the given values of the components as described previously to return a long integer value that represents the color.

Be sure to set the background color to solid when displaying text in the Window's environment. If the background colors you specified are not displayed as expected, one of the selected colors may be dithered (comprised of up to three different colored pixels). If you select a dithered color for the background, the system substitutes the nearest solid color.

Select your colors carefully. Always consider the foreground color as well as the background when changing and selecting colors. Selecting certain color combinations can call attention to a designated form or control, or it can actually make your interface harder to see or distracting to look at. Specifying a background color that contrasts with the foreground color allows you to make certain forms or controls more visible. Basic colors such as white and gray are commonly used when good contrast is needed.

Data Type: Long

See Also:

FillColor property, FillStyle property