CODEWITHSUNDEEP
winformslistviewwindows-7
Dmitry Brant
Dmitry Brant

Reputation: 7720

.NET ListView and Windows 7

Maybe I'm missing something, but... The ListView control in Windows 7 displays a highlight around selected items that looks like a 3D blue translucent rectangle (I'm not talking about the selection rectangle, but the rectangle around the actual selected items). It even shows a lighter rectangle when hovering over items.

However, when I use the ListView in WinForms (even when double-buffered), the selected items just have a plain blue background (and no hover background) which looks much less professional than, say, the list in Explorer.

Does anyone know what secret API function I should call to make the .NET ListView look in line with the rest of the OS?

For example, here is one of my applications written in C++, using a standard ListView control in Windows 7: (notice the highlight and hover rectangle)

alt text

And here is a rewrite of that application in C# with WinForms: (notice the crude highlight and no hover)

alt text

Upvotes: 5

Views: 3502

Answers (3)

Smith
Smith

Reputation: 51

Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices

Public Class Form1
    <DllImport("uxtheme", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode)> _
    Public Shared Function SetWindowTheme(ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, ByVal textSubAppName As String, ByVal textSubIdList As String) As Integer
    End Function

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        SetWindowTheme(lst.Handle, "explorer", Nothing)
    End Sub
End Class

The above code will work like a champ...

Upvotes: 1

vulkanino
vulkanino

Reputation: 9134

edit: now it is working for me too, the exact signature is:

 <DllImport("uxtheme.dll",
  BestFitMapping:=False,
  CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode,
  EntryPoint:="#136",
  CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.Winapi)>
  Private Shared Function SetWindowsTheme(ByVal handle As IntPtr, ByVal app As String, ByVal id As String) As Integer
        ' Leave function empty - DLLImport attribute forwards calls to the right function 
    End Function


Public Shared Sub MakeControlLookBeautiful(ByVal c As Windows.Forms.Control)
    SetWindowsTheme(c.Handle, "explorer", Nothing)
End Sub

:)

Upvotes: 0

Dmitry Brant
Dmitry Brant

Reputation: 7720

OK, I totally figured it out, and this may help others who are bothered by this issue.

I began by noticing that the ListView control in C++Builder looks "correct" under Windows 7, so I looked in the source code for the VCL to see what kind of magic they're doing to make the ListView look like the list control in Windows Explorer. I stumbled on one line of code that looked promising:

SetWindowTheme(Handle, 'explorer', nil);

From the SDK documentation, this function "Causes a window to use a different set of visual style information than its class normally uses."

So, I tried invoking this function on my WinForms ListView control:

[DllImport("uxtheme.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public static extern int SetWindowTheme(IntPtr hWnd, String pszSubAppName, String pszSubIdList);


SetWindowTheme(myListView.Handle, "explorer", null);

...and, by god, it worked! The ListView finally looks like it belongs with the rest of the OS! Thanks, Borland Inprise Embarcadero! You really are good for something!

Upvotes: 12

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