GUIDE to change colors of (in)active panels Windows 10

[brian]

A guide on how to change the colors of the active and inactive panels in WinCommander, under Windows 10

Do it via the Registry! It wasn't readily clear WHICH registry entries needed to be changed in the beginning but after much, much experimenting, these worked in Windows 10, for me.

I haven't found Tweakers that can do this in Windows 10, and MS has quite stupidly, removed the change color dialog box that was present until Windows 7.
It's as stupid as the headphone jack by Apple in the iPhone7


Save the text below in a textfile called: "MyWinCommanderColors.reg"

Code: Select all

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
;this is blue
"ActiveTitle"="0 0 160"
;this is yellow
"TitleText"="255 255 0"
;this is pink
"InactiveTitle"="255 204 204"
;this is black.
"InactiveTitleText"="0 0 0"

Find color codes here:
http://www.w3schools.com/colors/colors_rgb.asp

Take these two steps to affect the changes:
1. Run the REG file (double click/enter)
2. Log in again in Windows 10. (full reboot works too, but it's not needed)

Anyway, under that key are more color setttings.

Now this might not have been a problem for all of you, but it was for me, so there must be at least one person for which this is a problem too. In Windows 10, the difference between active and inactive windows INSIDE one program are barely noticeable. This is a major user fail.
This did work on WinCommander, but it didn't work on other programs like WinWord, Excel etc.

If anyone knows how to do THAT, please tell me.

[sqa_wizard]

Well, a nice way to do it system wide.

In case of Total Commander you can do this (and a lot more) specific at:
Configuration - Options - Color - Others: Section "Title bar for file panels"

[brian]

well, we live and learn.

at least, we'll live.