Classic Shell: Forum

in Windows 8/8.1, one thing that somewhat bugs me is the extremely light gray that is used to "highlight" selected items in treeViews (e.g. the navigation tree on the left-hand side of the windows explorer).

when the control is in-focus, the selection colour is reasonably dark. However, as soon as the control loses focus (e.g. when selecting en item on the right-hand side listView), the selection indicator colour is changed to a light gray that is extremely hard to recognise.

the only way I have so far found to change this, was to select one of the 'high-contrast' colour themes. Those I find somewhat too hefty. So what I would much prefer would be to have a means of setting a different colour for this one thing w/o having to switch to a high-contrast theme.

BTW: I already tried modifying HKCU/Control Panel/Colors. Esp. 'hilight' only affects the colour of selected in-focus items (which does not solve my problem).

any leads?

I believe this will require a modded Windows theme (visual style). You could install a software like UxStyle (http://www.uxstyle.com) which allows using unsigned custom themes and then download and apply some custom theme (visual style) from sites like Deviantart.com where the inactive selection color is darker.

Turns out this is tweakable from the registry.

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I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

@GauravK: thanks for your quick reply + explanations. Unfortunatly, it would seem that creating a custom style is a non-trivial task - and the existing styles are largely not really what I want (I'd really prefer just the vanilla windows 8 look with just this one tweak) :-/

so unless there is any other way to achieve this, I'll apparently have to look into crafting a custom theme myself

Consider calibrating your monitor. The gray color on a properly calibrated monitor isn't hard to spot.

-Noel

@dr1fter, I did some registry snooping and found out that the color used is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors: String value: ButtonFace. If you change it then it changes the color you want (inactive selection color in left pane of Explorer). The values in the registry are RGB values and after changing it, you must log out and log in again. Unfortunately, it also affects the background color of some other windows so change it with caution. Changing the shade slightly from 240 240 240 to a slightly darker one 220 220 220 should improve visibility.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

@GauravK: thanks - exactly as you stated, said registry setting does the trick (and also, as you stated changes some dialogue popup windows' background colours, but I don't mind that). So thanks a lot for your investigation and help

@NoelC: you are probably correct in that I use my monitor w/ reduced contrast and w/ pretty low brightness (which I however do on purpose for ergonomic reasons, since I spend a lot of time in front of monitors).