Change Color of Column Headers in WinGrid

Introduction

The UltraWinGrid column headers SupportThemes property is set to True by default.  This setting allows the grid to let the operating system draw certain aspects of the control with an XP theme. If you try to set the column headers of the grid to a custom color, they will be ignored.

There are two options for disabling the themed rendering, in turn, enabling the custom header colors to be drawn.

  1. Turn off SupportTheme - The benefit of this approach is that it is quite simple to do. The drawback is that now the entire grid will be drawn without those great-looking themes.
  2. Leave SupportThemes on but to prevent the column headers from being rendered with the XP themes. The benefit of this approach is that you can carefully select which elements of the grid are to be themed so that the grid does not have to lose its good looks entirely. The drawback is that the implementation is (ever so slightly) more complicated.

Below is a sample of the two ways to go about solving this problem.

C#

// One way to allow the column headers to show custom colors is to disallow the grid
// to use XP themes at all.
//
this.ultraGrid1.SupportThemes = false; 

//
// A more surgical approach would be to allow the grid to support XP themes, but to 
// disable themes just for the column headers.
//
this.ultraGrid1.SupportThemes = true;
foreach( UltraGridColumn col in this.ultraGrid1.DisplayLayout.Bands[0].Columns )
{
    // Here we "turn off" theming for the column header.
    col.Header.Appearance.ThemedElementAlpha = Infragistics.Win.Alpha.Transparent; 

    col.Header.Appearance.BackColor = Color.Azure;
    col.Header.Appearance.BackColorDisabled = Color.Orange;
}

VB

' One way to allow the column headers to show custom colors is to disallow the grid
' to use XP themes at all.
'
Me.ultraGrid1.SupportThemes = False 

'
' A more surgical approach would be to allow the grid to support XP themes, but to 
' disable themes just for the column headers.
'
Me.ultraGrid1.SupportThemes = True
Dim col As UltraGridColumn
For Each col In Me.ultraGrid1.DisplayLayout.Bands(0).Columns 

' Here we "turn off" theming for the column header.
col.Header.Appearance.ThemedElementAlpha = Infragistics.Win.Alpha.Transparent 

col.Header.Appearance.BackColor = Color.Azure
col.Header.Appearance.BackColorDisabled = Color.Orange 
Next
Related
Recommended