What's the proper way of changing the color of SetDlgItemText?

Question

Question is pretty straight forward, I'm using SetDlgItemText to display text, but I want to change the text color from black to grey so it appears grey on the screen. I tried settextcolor, knowing that was a long shot and it didn't work.

EDIT: Here is the code I have that creates the box

SetDlgItemText(hDlg, IDC_EDIT2, password_string);

Answer 1

You don't mention whether the control is a static or an edit control.

Use code like the following in your dialog proc; For Edit controls: under case WM_CTLCOLOREDIT: and for Static controls under case WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC:

case WM_CTLCOLOREDIT:
    if (::GetDlgCtrlID((HWND) lParam) == IDC_MY_CONTROL)
    {   HBRUSH hbr = (HBRUSH) DefWindowProc(hDlg, iMessage, wParam, lParam);
        SetTextColor((HDC) wParam, RGB(192, 192, 192));
        return (BOOL) hbr;
    }
    return FALSE;

Answer 2

Cannot do that with Stock dialogs.

Option #1 - use WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC

• http://www.wischik.com/lu/programmer/setdlgitemurl.html
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32/GLUZu-zH0TQ

Option #2 - USE RTF by swapping/switching to a Rich Edit Control

• https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787877(v=VS.85).aspx
• http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/general/49319/