wxColourDialog overview

Classes: wxColourDialog, wxColourData

The wxColourDialog presents a colour selector to the user, and returns with colour information.

The MS Windows colour selector

Under Windows, the native colour selector common dialog is used. This presents a dialog box with three main regions: at the top left, a palette of 48 commonly-used colours is shown. Under this, there is a palette of 16 `custom colours' which can be set by the application if desired. Additionally, the user may open up the dialog box to show a right-hand panel containing controls to select a precise colour, and add it to the custom colour palette.

The generic colour selector

Under non-MS Windows platforms, the colour selector is a simulation of most of the features of the MS Windows selector. Two palettes of 48 standard and 16 custom colours are presented, with the right-hand area containing three sliders for the user to select a colour from red, green and blue components. This colour may be added to the custom colour palette, and will replace either the currently selected custom colour, or the first one in the palette if none is selected. The RGB colour sliders are not optional in the generic colour selector. The generic colour selector is also available under MS Windows; use the name wxGenericColourDialog.

Example

In the samples/dialogs directory, there is an example of using the wxColourDialog class. Here is an excerpt, which sets various parameters of a wxColourData object, including a grey scale for the custom colours. If the user did not cancel the dialog, the application retrieves the selected colour and uses it to set the background of a window.

  wxColourData data;
  data.SetChooseFull(true);
  for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++)
  {
    wxColour colour(i*16, i*16, i*16);
    data.SetCustomColour(i, colour);
  }
      
  wxColourDialog dialog(this, &data);
  if (dialog.ShowModal() == wxID_OK)
  {
    wxColourData retData = dialog.GetColourData();
    wxColour col = retData.GetColour();
    wxBrush brush(col, wxSOLID);
    myWindow->SetBackground(brush);
    myWindow->Clear();
    myWindow->Refresh();
  }