Disable the blue highlighting for tabs?

If you want the XP orange highlight color instead you can place a manifest file in the same dir as your exe.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=31503

also you may want to try the GWL_STYLE option of the SetWindowLong command for altering a window's style (tabber uses WS_CHILD|WS_CLIPCHILDREN|TCS_FOCUSNEVER|TCS_HOTTRACK).