How do I set the font and color for a group box caption using Win32

Question

I am stuck with WIN32 ( no .NET or anything managed )

Answer 1

WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC was the correct way to control the color of the group box title.

However, it no longer works: If your application uses a manifest to include the version 6 comctl library, the Groupbox control no longer sends the WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC to its parent to get a brush. If your dialog controls look ugly, square and grey - like the windows 95 controls, then you don't have xp styles enabled and you can control the color of group boxes. But thats a terrible sacrifice to make! :P

Next, most of the standard controls send WM_CTLCOLORxxx messages to their parent (the dialog) to control their painting. The only way to identify the controls is to look up their control IDs - which is why assigning controls a identifier that indicates that that control needs a specific color or font is a good idea. i.e. Don't use IDC_STATIC for controls that need red text. Set them to IDC_DRAWRED or some made up id.

Dont use GetDlgItem(hwndDlg,IDC_ID) == hwndCtl to test if the WM_CTLCOLOR message is for the correct control: GetDlgItem will simply return the handle of the first control on the dialog with the specific Id, which means only one control will be painted.

case WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC:
  if(GetWindowLong( (HWND)lParam, GWL_ID) == IDC_RED)
    return MakeControlRed( (HDC)wParam );

You always* need to return a HBRUSH from a WM_CTLCOLORxxx message - even if you really just want to 'tamper' with the HDC being passed in. If you don't return a valid brush from your dialog proc then the dialogs window procedure will think you didn't handle the message at all and pass it on to DefWindowProc - which will reset any changes to the HDC you made. Instead of creating brushes, the system has a cache of brushes on standby to draw standard ui elements: GetSysColorBrush

Of course, you DON'T always need to return an HBRUSH. IF you have the xp theme style enabled in your app, you are sometimes allowed to return null :- because xp theme dialogs have differently colored backgrounds (especially on tab controls) returning a syscolor brush would result in ugly grey boxes on a lighter background :- in those specific cases the dialog manager will allow you to return null and NOT reset your changes in the DC.