Changing background of text in edit control

Question

can you change the background of text in area of edit control that would stay static?

Answer 1

WM_CTLCOLOREDIT allows you to set text and background color(+brush), if you want more control than that, you have to subclass and paint yourself

Answer 2

In the parent of the edit control, handle the WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC message, the wParam of this message is the HDC that the Edit control is about to draw with, for most CTLCOLOR messages, if you set text and background colors into this DC, the control will use the colors you set.

You can also return an HBRUSH and the contol will use that for any brush painting that it wil do, but many controls don't use brushes much, so that will have limited effect for some CTLCOLOR messages. Your best bet here is to return the DC brush, and set the DC Brush color to match the BkColor of the DC.

 LRESULT lRet = 0; // return value for our WindowProc.
 COLORREF crBk = RGB(255,0,0); // use RED for Background.

 ... 

 case WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC:
    {
    HDC hdc = (HDC)wParam;
    HWND hwnd = (HWND)lParam; 

    // if multiple edits and only one should be colored, use
    // the control id to tell them apart.
    //
    if (GetDlgCtrlId(hwnd) == IDC_EDIT_RECOLOR)
       {
       SetBkColor(hdc, crBk); // Set to red
       SetDCBrushColor(hdc, crBk);
       lRet = (LRESULT) GetStockObject(DC_BRUSH); // return a DC brush.
       }
    else
       {
       lRet = DefWindowProc(hwnd, uMsg, wParam, lParam);
       }
    }
    break;