[Tip] Changing Explorer's Menu Text highlight color

[K-Johnson]

Hi all,

By default, Vista uses the black text color even under highlight in the toolbar/menubar, which isn't bad but it isn't consistent with the rest of Vista's menu's and isn't the best choice for optimum contrast and visibility.


This was something that bugged me and I had trouble finding it as I assumed it was in the 'Fonts, Colors, & System Metrics' section, but today I found it!
It is modifiable under "Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Toolbars & Headers > Toolbar > <default>".  Change the "HOT" and "PRESSED" TEXTCOLOR:COLOR property to white or your desired highlighted text color.

Here is the result (FYI, I modified the overlay color in the preview):

[K-Johnson]

So after replacing this with a unique color and tracing it in msstyle, it is only listed once which means it is a shared value, unfortunately.  You may notice the mouseover (HOT) state on IE toolbar and VSB for instance will make it hard to see the text when it uses transparent buttons.   A quick and dirty fix is to fake the shadow in the HOT state button image of these transparent images by darkening the center of it.  Alternatively, if you're looking to create a new theme, you can just create a solid darker image where the white text would show through.

Thanks to idas for confirming my worries.  Sadly, we can't have everything in Vista working for us.