Application Styling - Style Selector User Control for WinForms

Quite often, I notice myself having to write similar logic to allow end-users the ability to select one of the cool Application Styling themes that ship with Infragistics NetAdvantage Windows Forms controls. As I was sitting here I thought "Wouldn't it be cool if I just had a user control that I can toss onto a configuration form that allows the end-user to select from a list of styles that exist in a directory?" Well, I created a user control that does exacly that and here is what I did:

I created a project named AppStylingLib and this contains a user control named AppStyleUserControl.cs, This user control allows end-users to select from the list of styles that are found in the Styles directory. This user control also loads and persists selected styles to a settings file. The project also contains a settings file named AppStylingLibSettings.settings. This is responsible for persisting end-user selected styles.

 

Here is the source code for the user control:

using

System;

using

System.Collections.Generic;

using

System.ComponentModel;

using

System.Drawing;

using System.Text;

using

System.Windows.Forms;

using

System.IO;

using

Infragistics.Win.AppStyling;

namespace

AppStylingLib

{

public partial class AppStyleUserControl : UserControl

{

public AppStyleUserControl()

{

InitializeComponent();

}

private static string _StylePath = string.Empty;

//This is static so that we can set this property before we even load the

//user control instance. e.g., we set this property from the Main( ) method.

public static string StylePath

{

get { return _StylePath; }

set { _StylePath = value; }

}

private void AppStyleUserControl_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

this.LoadUI();

}

/// <summary>

/// Clicking this button loads and persists the current Application Style

/// </summary>

/// <param name="sender"></param>

/// <param name="e"></param>

private void btnApply_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (this.cboStyles.SelectedIndex != -1)

{

string theStyleFile = this.cboStyles.SelectedItem.DataValue.ToString();

StyleManager.Load(theStyleFile);

AppStylingLibSettings.Default.AppStyle = Path.GetFileName(theStyleFile);

AppStylingLibSettings.Default.Save();

}

}

/// <summary>

/// This method loads or refreshes the controls on the form.

/// This means that the WinComboEditor will scan the directory you specified

/// and populate with any Style files (*.isl)

/// </summary>

public void LoadUI()

{

this.cboStyles.Items.Clear();

if (Directory.Exists(StylePath))

{

string[] theFiles = Directory.GetFiles(StylePath, "*.isl");

if (theFiles.Length > 0)

{

foreach (string theFile in theFiles)

{

this.cboStyles.Items.Add(theFile, Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(theFile));

}

}

//Check to see if we have a persisted style

string theStyle = AppStylingLibSettings.Default.AppStyle.Trim();

 

if (this.cboStyles.Items.Count > 0 && theStyle.Length > 0)

{

//If we do, then we pre-select the style within the Combo,

//so that we know what style is currently applied

this.cboStyles.Value = Path.Combine(StylePath, theStyle);

}

}

}

 

/// <summary>

/// This method allows us to load a style that was persisted.

/// </summary>

public static void LoadePersistedStyle()

{

string theStyle = AppStylingLibSettings.Default.AppStyle.Trim();

if (theStyle.Length > 0)

{

StyleManager.Load(Path.Combine(StylePath, theStyle));

}

}

}

}

 

This User Control is used as follows:

1. Place the user control on any application form that you designate as a "configuration" form.
2. Determine where *.isl files will be stored (you may want to provide a default location as well as allow end-users to specify a custom path).
3. Inform the user control of the *.isl path and then let it load (if any) previously persisted styles.

Here is the Main method of a sample application that uses this user control:

/// <summary>

/// The main entry point for the application.

/// </summary>

[STAThread]

static void Main()

{

//Use the static members to set things up:

AppStylingLib.AppStyleUserControl.StylePath = Application.StartupPath + @"\Styles";

AppStylingLib.AppStyleUserControl.LoadePersistedStyle();

 

Application.EnableVisualStyles();

Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);

Application.Run(new Form1());

}

This application assumes that you have a subdirectory named Styles that contains several *.isl files.

Please feel free to download and check out the source code for this sample:

http://download.infragistics.com/users/TomP/AppStylingUserControlTest.zip