Changing TabControl tab title text background color c++

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2005, C++, and I have a tabcontrol with a couple tabs. I have changed the color of each tab to have a back color of Transparent, to match the color of the rest of the program (Control grey), however the color behind the text for the title of the tab is white. Is there any way to change this?

Answer 1

A tab control draws itself according to the currently selected windows theme. Which ignores a custom color. This isn't something you ought to change, you typically want to honor the user's attempt to style the windows according to her selected preference.

If you really do want to override it then you can use custom drawing, the TCS_OWNERDRAWFIXED style flag and the WM_DRAWITEM message. Beware that drawing with a transparent color isn't going to work.