As of a particular Java version, we believe 1.7_0_05, the foreground color (text color) of labels whose enabled state is false is now set to another color which we believe is a laf defaults. This occurs in both the latest Servoy 5 and 6 versions. Attempting to control the color using element styles, or HTML with css in the text property as opposed to straight text, does nothing. As for why this matters, we use the fgcolor in conjunction with the enabled=false state to communicate valuable interface indicators to our users as to state and control their access to functionality. We must set these labels to enabled=false because the labels act as navigation buttons and we do not use the showClick attribute for stylistic reasons.
A synopsis of when FGColor works and fails
Component, State, Result
Button, Enabled=true, Good
Button, Enabled=false, Good
Label, Enabled=true, Good
Label, Enabled=false, Fail
Is this expected behavior? Is this bad behavior due to something new in the latest Java 7 versions? If this isn’t a bug, what are our best options? No bad options please as I’ve already thought of a handful of those.