How to change title bar color in windows style panel

[atomic928]

I have a panel, in a windows style, and I want to change the default color (blue) to something else.

I see the 'Title Background Color' and the 'Title Color' are grayed out in properties under 'Title and Titlebar Appearance'.

Is there anyway I can change that blue to some other color?

Thanks

[ebalci]

Those attributes are valid for child panels only.

See the list of panel attributes.

[atomic928]

So how does one go about making a 'panel' a child of another panel, or a child panel alone?

It seems all the panels I create have the attributes greyed out that I need.

Thanks

[RobertoBozzolo]

A child panel alone is a contradiction 

You define a panel as a child one by passing the handle of an existing panel to LoadPanel

See an example in your CVI samples folder called panels.prj

[atomic928]

Isn't that done at run time? How can this be done and seen in the panel editor?

[ebalci]

Unfortunately it can only be set at runtime. There is no setting in the panel editor.

[RobertoBozzolo]

To be a bit more precise, the aspect of the panel (titlebar and frame style) you see in the editor is the one it will have if loaded as a child. When loaded as a top-level panel it will follow the Windows theme active in your system.

[atomic928]

OK so I tried setting the title bar color on a child panel and am getting a error of "Library function error (return vaule == -46[0xffffffd2]). The attribute passed is not valid".

I'm using the following code:

        int bChildPanel   = NULL;

        int nStatus = 0;

        // load panel

        bChildPanel   = LoadPanel (bMainPanel, "test.uir", MYCHILD_PANEL);
        
        nStatus = SetCtrlAttribute(bChildPanel, MYCHILD_PANEL,  ATTR_TITLE_BACKCOLOR,  VAL_DK_GRAY);

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[RobertoBozzolo]

Just tried with panels.prj example in CVI2012.

I never receive the error you are getting; nevertheless, the titlebar color attribute is honoured only if the title bar style is set to "Classic"

This is how it looks: note the different style for the titlebar:

I suggest you experiment with the sample project as I have done, and then compare your actual code with that of the example.

[atomic928]

As per your suggestion I loaded the panels.prj into my Labwindows 2010 enviroment added the 'SetCtrlAttribute' and now am getting the following error:

"NON-FATAL RUN-TIME ERROR:   "panels.c", line 45, col 5, thread id 0x00001DF8:   Library function error (return value == -13 [0xfffffff3]). Invalid control ID"

I only added one line, see snippet below:

   hparent = LoadPanel (0, "panels.uir", PARENT);
    g_hchild1 = LoadPanel (hparent, "panels.uir", CHILD1);
    g_hgrandchild1 = LoadPanel (g_hchild1, "panels.uir", GRNDCHILD1);
    g_hchild2 = LoadPanel (hparent, "panels.uir", CHILD2);
    g_hgrandchild2 = LoadPanel (g_hchild2, "panels.uir", GRNDCHILD2);

    SetCtrlAttribute(g_hchild1, CHILD1, ATTR_TITLE_BACKCOLOR, VAL_DK_GRAY);

Any clues as to why I'm getting the above mentioned error from the 'SetCtrlAttribute' call"

Thanks