How do I change the background color of current buffer or pane in vim?

Question

Imagine I'm coding, and I have different split panes open. What settings should I pass into vimrc to change the background color as I switch from one buffer/pane to another?

I have tried:

autocmd BufEnter * highlight Normal ctermbg=black                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
autocmd BufLeave * highlight Normal ctermbg=white 

I would like to add that I am sure that I've got 256 colors enabled

Answer 1

Actually, there is a way to get this effect. See the answer by @blueyed to this related question: vim - dim inactive split panes. He provides the script below and when placed in my .vimrc it does dim the background of inactive windows. In effect, it makes their background the same colour specified for the colorcolumn (the vertical line indicating your desired text width).

" Dim inactive windows using 'colorcolumn' setting
" This tends to slow down redrawing, but is very useful.
" Based on https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_use/IJU-Vk-QLJE/xz4hjPjCRBUJ
" XXX: this will only work with lines containing text (i.e. not '~')
" from 
if exists('+colorcolumn')
  function! s:DimInactiveWindows()
    for i in range(1, tabpagewinnr(tabpagenr(), '$'))
      let l:range = ""
      if i != winnr()
        if &wrap
         " HACK: when wrapping lines is enabled, we use the maximum number
         " of columns getting highlighted. This might get calculated by
         " looking for the longest visible line and using a multiple of
         " winwidth().
         let l:width=256 " max
        else
         let l:width=winwidth(i)
        endif
        let l:range = join(range(1, l:width), ',')
      endif
      call setwinvar(i, '&colorcolumn', l:range)
    endfor
  endfunction
  augroup DimInactiveWindows
    au!
    au WinEnter * call s:DimInactiveWindows()
    au WinEnter * set cursorline
    au WinLeave * set nocursorline
  augroup END
endif