Customizing Items in C# for Drop Down and List Control

DropDownList Control and List Control are designed for developers to alter the standard Windows Forms combo box control and enrich the UI design for their Windows Forms applications. The Drop Down List Control and List Control contain plenty of items and support auto complete, sorting, and filtering etc. It is also compatible with multi-line text in HTML style text formatting, checkboxes, and rich visualizations.

Items Appearance Customizing

The Kettic Drop Down List Control allows .NET UI Designers to customize the items appearance in the Drop Down List control. It is able to be achieved via using the event, VisualListItemFormatting. Furthermore, we need to offer an else clause to reset the item appearance settings that have been introduced as the Kettic Drop Down List Control uses the data virtualization and probably lead to unpredicted appearance results when reusing items. The following are the C# code that shows how to customize the color of an item being chosen.


private void dropDownList_VisualListItemFormatting(object sender, VisualItemFormattingEventArgs args)
{
    if (args.VisualItem.Chosen)
    {
        args.VisualItem.NumberOfColors = 1;
        args.VisualItem.BackColor = Color.Green;
        args.VisualItem.BorderColor = Color.Purple;
    }
    else
    {
        args.VisualItem.ResetValue(LightVisualElement.NumberOfColorsProperty, Kettic.WinControls.ValueResetFlags.Local);
args.VisualItem.ResetValue(LightVisualElement.BackColorProperty, Kettic.WinControls.ValueResetFlags.Local);
args.VisualItem.ResetValue(LightVisualElement.BorderColorProperty, Kettic.WinControls.ValueResetFlags.Local);
    }
}

Customizing Auto Complete DropDown Appearance

The Kettic Drop Down List Control allows .NET UI Designers to customize the auto complete popup. It is able to be achieved through subscribing the event, Visual Item Formatting. The C# code snippet below shows how to customize the auto complete drop down items font,


dropDownList1.DropDownListElement.AutoCompleteSuggest.DropDownList.ListElement.VisualItemFormatting += new VisualListItemFormattingEventHandler(ListElement_VisualItemFormatting);

The C# code snippet below shows how to customize all items in the auto complete drop down Font.


Font myFont = new Font("Arial UI", 12, FontStyle.Italic);
private void ListElement_VisualItemFormatting(object sender, VisualItemFormattingEventArgs args)
{
    args.VisualItem.Font = myFont;
}

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