CSS System Colors
CSS2 defined the following named color keywords that were meant to take their name from operating system themes. These were called "CSS system colors".
- ActiveBorder
- Active window border.
- ActiveCaption
- Active window caption.
- AppWorkspace
- Background color of multiple document interface.
- Background
- Desktop background.
- ButtonFace
- Face color for three-dimensional display elements.
- ButtonHighlight
- Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements (for edges facing away from the light source).
- ButtonShadow
- Shadow color for three-dimensional display elements.
- ButtonText
- Text on push buttons.
- CaptionText
- Text in caption, size box, and scrollbar arrow box.
- GrayText
- Grayed (disabled) text. This color is set to #000 if the current display driver does not support a solid gray color.
- Highlight
- Item(s) selected in a control.
- HighlightText
- Text of item(s) selected in a control.
- InactiveBorder
- Inactive window border.
- InactiveCaption
- Inactive window caption.
- InactiveCaptionText
- Color of text in an inactive caption.
- InfoBackground
- Background color for tooltip controls.
- InfoText
- Text color for tooltip controls.
- Menu
- Menu background.
- MenuText
- Text in menus.
- Scrollbar
- Scroll bar gray area.
- ThreeDDarkShadow
- Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements.
- ThreeDFace
- Face color for three-dimensional display elements.
- ThreeDHighlight
- Highlight color for three-dimensional display elements.
- ThreeDLightShadow
- Light color for three-dimensional display elements (for edges facing the light source).
- ThreeDShadow
- Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements.
- Window
- Window background.
- WindowFrame
- Window frame.
- WindowText
- Text in windows.
CSS system colors have been deprecated in CSS3, so don't use these keywords. They were initially replaced by the appearance property, but that was subsequently dropped from the CSS3 specification.
CSS3 states:
User agents must support these keywords, but should map them to "default" values, not based on the user's OS settings (for example, mapping all the "background" colors to white and "foreground" colors to black).