how I made a simple skin to change chart background color, plus a question

[kh_model]

Today I created my first skin for NT8 simply by making a copy of the existing skin "Slate Light" and editing the code in notepad while NinjaTrader was not running.

My title is poorly worded, because we can edit chart background via normal menus without any need for editing a skin. The title of the post should have focused more on how to change the areas of color which lie a bit outside of the chart background area, by changing the skin in NT8.

It seems that I was able to change the background color for control panel, some areas outside the chart background, chart trader background, and even outer regions of the superDOM background by overwriting just one line in BluePrint.xaml with a new hexadecimal color as follows:

original code:

<Color x:Key="WindowBottomGradientStopColor">#FFE6E7E8</Color>

modified code:

<Color x:Key="WindowBottomGradientStopColor">#d4d0c8</Color>


Now I need to find a skin parameter which can change the color for a specific region of the superDOM which is best described as "the area which changes color depending on the state of global simulation mode".

Thanks to other posts here I have learned that in global simulation mode, there is an area of color which surrounds the price ladder in the superDOM which can be controlled via the control panel -> tools -> options menu.

When not in global simulation mode, I have observed that the same area of color displays differently depending on which skin is currently in use, so it shows a light gray color when skin "Slate Light" is applied, and a dark gray color when skin "Slate Gray" is applied.

So far, I have tried replacing every instance of the color #FFE6E7E8 in the file BluePrint.xaml, but none of them seem to change the color of the superDOM which corresponds to the area mentioned above when global simulation mode is disabled. Can anyone tell me which parameter in which skin file might need to be changed?

Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions which you may be able to offer.

[kh_model]

I found an answer to my own question, so I will share it here with others. At first I did not notice that in NT8, there is a tab interface which did not exist in the superDOM in NT7. After minimal testing, it looks to me as if only one additional line of code needs to be edited in the file called "BluePrint.xaml" in order to change the background color of tabbed windows such as the one used in the superDOM.

original code:
<SolidColorBrush po:Freeze="true" x:Key="TabBackground" Color="#FFFFFFFF"/>

modified code:
<SolidColorBrush po:Freeze="true" x:Key="TabBackground" Color="#d4d0c8"/>

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Thank you for your update, kh_model!