Introduction
In this article we will see how to write owner drawn ListBox
control. Typically, Windows handles the task of drawing the items to display in
the ListBox
. You can use the DrawMode
property and handle the MeasureItem
and DrawItem
events to provide the ability to override the automatic drawing that Windows
provides and draw the items yourself. You can use owner-drawn ListBox
controls to display variable-height items, images, or a different color or font
for the text of each item in the list.
Description
We start by creating a Windows Application. Add ListBox
to the form and set its DrawMode
property to OwnerDrawVariable
.
Alternatively you can add following line to the InitializeComponent
function of your form,
this.lstColor.DrawMode = System.Windows.Forms.DrawMode.OwnerDrawVariable;
Next add following lines below above line
this.lstColor.DrawItem += new DrawItemEventHandler(this.DrawItemHandler);
this.lstColor.MeasureItem +=
new System.Windows.Forms.MeasureItemEventHandler(this.MeasureItemHandler);
By doing this, windows will send us DrawItem and MeasureItem event for
each item added to ListBox.
Next, add handlers for these events
private void DrawItemHandler(object sender, DrawItemEventArgs e)
{
e.DrawBackground();
e.DrawFocusRectangle();
e.Graphics.DrawString(data[e.Index],
new Font(FontFamily.GenericSansSerif,
14, FontStyle.Bold),
new SolidBrush(color[e.Index]),
e.Bounds);
}
private void MeasureItemHandler(object sender, MeasureItemEventArgs e)
{
e.ItemHeight= 22;
}
In above code date is array that holds items to be inserted and color is
array of class Color
Thats it. We are done!
Send me your comments at lparam@hotmail.com