vb hex color codes

Question

I want to do this:

    Const COLOR_GREEN = &H00FF00
    Me.Label1.BackColor = COLOR_GREEN

There is a problem however in that vb automatically decides to convert &H00FF00 to &HFF00 so I get this instead:

    Const COLOR_GREEN = &HFF00
    Me.Label1.BackColor = COLOR_GREEN

The decimal value COLOR_GREEN is now -256 instead of 65280 and so the background is black instead of green! This is annoying as I can perfectly well set the color in form design mode using #00FF00.

What is the equivalent in vb of setting a color to #00FF00 in the form design mode?

Answer 1

Have you tried the literal &H0000FF00&? The following code works just fine for me:

Const COLOR_GREEN = &H0000FF00&
Me.Label1.BackColor = COLOR_GREEN

Of course, VB 6 automatically collapses it to this, which still works just fine because the two values are completely equivalent numerically:

Const COLOR_GREEN = &HFF00&
Me.Label1.BackColor = COLOR_GREEN

The trick is that the value needs to be declared as a Long, rather than an Integer. Putting the ampersand (&) after the numeric literal accomplishes this.

That also explains why you're seeing a value of -256 instead of the 65280 that you expect. The value 65280 is too long to fit in an Integer, and when it overflows that data type, VB 6 wraps it around again, producing -256.

It's also worth noting that hexadecimal literals in VB 6 will not be equivalent to those that you are probably familiar with from the web and HTML programming. Instead of the RRGGBB notation that you find there, VB 6 uses BBGGRR notation, or &H00BBGGRR&, the same as the native Win32 COLORREF structure where the low-order byte is red, rather than blue.

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Of course, do note that for standard color values like the one you've shown here, you're probably better off using the VB literals, such as vbGreen:

Me.Label1.BackColor = vbGreen

Answer 2

You cannot preserve the leading zeros in vb's hex notation. Numeric literals (inclding &H*) default to 16bit integers, for a 32bit constant literal suffix with & to implicitly state its a long;

Const COLOR_GREEN = &HFF00&

?COLOR_GREEN
 65280 

Answer 3

You can use Colortranslator

             dim myColor as new  Color
               myColor=ColorTranslator.fromHTML("#ff0000") 'Red color