Given if I had to do what you are asking this is how I would do it today. Not to say that there isn't some other fancy way to do it. I would not be surprised given all the bells and whistles in the WinGrid.

To set the grid as read-only to the user change the allowupdate, allowedit and allowdelete properties to false. You do this in the grid properties window by going to DisplayLayout -> Override and updating the AllowAddNew, AllowUpdate and AllowDelete properties or in the feature picker in the UltraGrid designer.

At run time you can do the same thing.

        Grid.DisplayLayout.Override.AllowAddNew = Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.AllowAddNew.No
        Grid.DisplayLayout.Override.AllowUpdate = Infragistics.Win.DefaultableBoolean.False
        Grid.DisplayLayout.Override.AllowDelete = Infragistics.Win.DefaultableBoolean.False

To update the current selected cells column highlight I used the cell click event updated the cell's column CellAppearance.BackgroundColor property to another column. But if you want the previous column to change back after you leave you have to save that information somewhere. I just saved that information using the target object's tag property.

    Private Sub Grid_ClickCell(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.ClickCellEventArgs) Handles Grid.ClickCell
        Dim Grid = CType(sender, Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.UltraGrid)
        Dim CurrentCell = e.Cell
        Dim CurrentColumn = CurrentCell.Column

        'Check for last cell/column to change it back
        If Grid.Tag IsNot Nothing Then
            If TypeOf Grid.Tag Is Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.UltraGridColumn Then
                'Found last grid column
                Dim PreviousColumn = CType(Grid.Tag, Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.UltraGridColumn)
                If TypeOf PreviousColumn.Tag Is Infragistics.Win.Appearance Then
                    'Found the last column appearance
                    PreviousColumn.CellAppearance = CType(PreviousColumn.Tag, Infragistics.Win.Appearance)
                End If
            End If
        End If

        'Remember the current column for later
        Grid.Tag = CurrentColumn

        'Save the existing column appearance for later
        CurrentColumn.Tag = CurrentColumn.CellAppearance

        'Update the current cells column to alternate color
        'Would be better to use same appearance object and define it global to this method
        Dim Appearance As New Infragistics.Win.Appearance With {.BackColor = Color.Yellow}
        CurrentColumn.CellAppearance = Appearance
    End Sub