>Maybe I'm just obtuse, but I never could figure out how to set a chosen background color on a read-only editbox. It always goes to a strange color I can't seem to control, especially when it looses focus. So I have resorted to KeyPress and dangerously simplistic or annoyingly complex keystroke checks.
>
>The other day I stumbled on a way to control the BackColor on an EditBox with ReadOnly set to .T.
>
>I put the editbox in a container of the same size, a zero-width border and the opaque background color I desire. If I want the background to be the same whether or not the editbox has the focus, I need to have the editbox background set to Opaque for some strange reason or it gets wierd again. I set the editbox's DisabledBackColor to the same color as the container just so I can preview and remember the colors when I'm editing, although it doesn't seem to matter at run time. I also set the anchors for the editbox to be anchored all four ways inside the containr so resizing the form works as expected.
>
>The only downsides I've found so far are that I have an extra level of addressing to access the editbox, I have to remember the container when I'm editing the form, and resizing the editbox in the editor is awkward, but I can live with those. (Resizing in the editor is not hard: I just resize the container and then manually set the same height and width for the editbox.)
>
>Like I said, maybe I'm obtuse and have overlooked something obvious to someone else, but in case I haven't, there it is.

Maybe this is too obvious, but have you looked at the .DisabledBackColor and .DisabledForeColor of the editbox?

I just did a quick test with a new form in VFP9 SP2 7423:

- created a new blank form
- added an editbox. Initially, its background color was white (255,255,255), controlled by the .BackColor property
- set its .ReadOnly property to .T.. This caused its background color to change to the .DisabledBackColor value of 236,233,216 (default on my system)
- then manually set .DisabledBackColor to 255,255,255. The editbox's background color changed back to white, as expected.

The results of my testing:

.ReadOnly / .Enabled      Foreground Color      Background Color
--------------------      ----------------      ----------------

.F. / .T.                 .ForeColor            .BackColor

.T. / .T.                 .ForeColor            .DisabledBackColor

.F. / .F.                 .DisabledForeColor    .DisabledBackColor

.T. / .F.                 .DisabledForeColor    .DisabledBackColor 

You may also need to experiment with _Screen.Themes or SYS( 2700 ).

If you're using a VFP framework, it may have its own ideas about how to handle foreground/background colours of ReadOnly/Disabled controls. The old VFE 5.0/5.5 framework did this, it was tricky to override.