MFC - change text color of a cstatic text control

Question

How do you change the text color of a CStatic text control? Is there a simple way other that using the CDC::SetTextColor?

thanks...

Answer 1

From the Answers given here and other places, it was not obvious how to create a derived class to be used instead of CStatic that handles coloring itself.

So following is what works for me, using MSVS 2013 Version 12.0.40629.00 Update 5. I can place a "Static Text"-control in the resource editor, then replace the type of the member variable with TColorText.

In the .h-file:

class TColorText : public CStatic
{
protected:
  DECLARE_MESSAGE_MAP( )

public:
  // make the background transparent (or if ATransparent == true, restore the previous background color)
  void setTransparent( bool ATransparent = true );
  // set background color and make the background opaque
  void SetBackgroundColor( COLORREF );
  void SetTextColor( COLORREF );

protected:
  HBRUSH CtlColor( CDC* pDC, UINT nCtlColor );

private:
  bool MTransparent = true;
  COLORREF MBackgroundColor = RGB( 255, 255, 255 );  // default is white (in case someone sets opaque without setting a color)
  COLORREF MTextColor = RGB( 0, 0, 0 );  // default is black. it would be more clean 
                                         // to not use the color before set with SetTextColor(..), but whatever...
};

in the .cpp-file:

void TColorText::setTransparent( bool ATransparent )
{
  MTransparent = ATransparent;
  Invalidate( );
}

void TColorText::SetBackgroundColor( COLORREF AColor )
{
  MBackgroundColor = AColor;
  MTransparent = false;
  Invalidate( );
}

void TColorText::SetTextColor( COLORREF AColor )
{
  MTextColor = AColor;
  Invalidate( );
}

BEGIN_MESSAGE_MAP( TColorText, CStatic )
  ON_WM_CTLCOLOR_REFLECT( )
END_MESSAGE_MAP( )

HBRUSH TColorText::CtlColor( CDC* pDC, UINT nCtlColor )
{
  pDC->SetTextColor( MTextColor );
  pDC->SetBkMode( TRANSPARENT );  // we do not want to draw background when drawing text. 
                                  // background color comes from drawing the control background.
  if( MTransparent )
    return nullptr;  // return nullptr to indicate that the parent object 
                     // should supply the brush. it has the appropriate background color.
  else
    return (HBRUSH) CreateSolidBrush( MBackgroundColor );  // color for the empty area of the control
}