DerekStuart wrote: I notice using TSpeedButton the background colour still remains grey, as per the normal button. This isn't an issue as it can be overlaid with 100% bitmap anyway.Hi Derek,

I see in Lazarus (but not in Delphi5) that TSpeedButton does have a Color property -- but to make it work you must also set Transparent to False.

The default background colour is actually clBtnFace, which is the current colour set in Windows, so that it matches other Windows applications and ordinary TButtons. If the user were to change their Windows desktop theme, the SpeedButtons would change accordingly.

All TGraphicControls have an accessible Canvas property. You can therefore draw whatever you want on the button in any colour. For example on a large SpeedButton you could draw the entire Templot trackplan.

To do such things you need to add a handler in the SpeedButton's Paint event (in the events column on the Object Inspector):

procedure Tmy_form.my_speedbuttonPaint(Sender:TObject);

begin
  with my_speedbutton.Canvas do begin

    Brush.Color:=clYellow;
    Brush.Style:=bsSolid;
    FillRect(Rect(0,0,my_speedbutton.Width,my_speedbutton.Height));

    Font.Name:='Arial';
    Font.Size:=12;
    Font.Color:=clRed;
    TextOut(0,0,'click me');

  end;//with

end;

which would make the button colour yellow all over with the text click me on it in red, in Arial size 12, at the top-left of the button.

Note that once you do this sort of thing, you make yourself responsible for all the other built-in functions, such as drawing the borders, latched-down appearance, etc.

cheers,

Martin.