Back in the days of 16-bit applications I worked for a company which was running an ERP system that had little in the way of display customization. Sometimes users would switch into the Test environment to do something (which looked exactly the same as the Production environment apart from a small reference to the word "Test" down in the Status bar) and then forget to change back and end up transacting for some period of time in Test instead of Production. This led to all sorts of reports of "The computer deleted all my work!"
To overcome this I wrote a utility that used Windows Messages to detect that little word "Test" and change the background color of the system accordingly. When they went back to Production the word disappeared and the color reverted to normal.
As it happens I have an almost identical need for myself now. The application in question is almost irrelevant but it happens to be SQL Server Management Studio 2012 and today I nearly corrupted some records on the live server because I had been swapping between it and the development server. Once again the only way to tell is a small reference in the Status bar to the connected server.
It was so long ago that I wrote that utility that I'm not even certain which Windows Message I used to change the color, but I think it might've been WM_CTLCOLOR which appears to no longer be available. I used the Microsoft Spy++ program to monitor for messages in other programs which I can change the background color for but I couldn't see anything applicable in the Message log.
Is there a method, or even a utility, whereby I can change the background color of another application on the same computer?
Thanks
Wayne
(Windows 7)
