You might aware about available System Colors in Windows
machine. You might have changed system colors using below window. If you change
color and appearance of any item (e.g. color, font, size, font color etc.) it
will change appearance and color of all the application available in windows.
In short you can change system’s default appearance and color using below
dialog.
In this post I will demonstrate how you can get available
list of system colors dynamically using WPF application. Let’s have a look on
below example.
XAML
<Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.SysColors"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="System Colors"
Height="300" Width="300">
<Grid>
<DataGrid Name="grdSysColorList"
AutoGenerateColumns="False"
GridLinesVisibility="Vertical">
<DataGrid.Columns>
<DataGridTemplateColumn Header="Color"
Width="100">
<DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<TextBlock Margin="5">
<TextBlock.Background>
<SolidColorBrush Color="{Binding Color}" />
</TextBlock.Background>
</TextBlock>
</DataTemplate>
</DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>
</DataGridTemplateColumn>
<DataGridTextColumn Header="Name"
Binding="{Binding Name}"
Width="200"/>
</DataGrid.Columns>
</DataGrid>
</Grid>
</Window>
Code
public partial class SysColors : Window
{
public SysColors()
{
InitializeComponent();
LoadSystemColors();
}
public void
LoadSystemColors()
{
List<SysColorItem>
sysColorList = new List<SysColorItem>();
Type t = typeof(System.Windows.SystemColors);
PropertyInfo[] propInfo = t.GetProperties();
foreach (PropertyInfo
p in propInfo)
{
if (p.PropertyType == typeof(Color))
{
SysColorItem list = new
SysColorItem();
list.Color = (Color)p.GetValue(new Color(),
BindingFlags.GetProperty, null, null, null);
list.Name = p.Name;
sysColorList.Add(list);
}
else if
(p.PropertyType == typeof(SolidColorBrush))
{
SysColorItem list = new
SysColorItem();
list.Color = ((SolidColorBrush)p.GetValue(new SolidColorBrush(),
BindingFlags.GetProperty, null, null, null)).Color;
list.Name = p.Name;
sysColorList.Add(list);
}
}
grdSysColorList.ItemsSource = sysColorList;
}
}
public class SysColorItem
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public Color Color { get; set; }
}
}
Output
In above example you can see DataGrid having two columns Color
and Name. Color displays various system colors and name displays its name. I
have retrieved this system colors using Reflection. First I have retrieved type
of SystemColors and then retrieved all the properties having Color and SolidColorBrush type. In last i have bind that list of SystemColors to DataGrid.
How to apply system colors to WPF controls
In above example we saw how we can retrieve list of system
colors dynamically. Now let’s see how you can apply system colors to WPF
control.
<Button Background="{x:Static SystemColors.MenuHighlightBrush}"
Content="Click Me!!!"
Height="40" Width="150"
HorizontalAlignment="Center"
VerticalAlignment="Center">
Above code demonstrates how you can apply MenuHighlightBrush to
Button’s background. Similarly you can apply other system colors as well.
SystemColors has all the colors defined as Static property so we have used
{x:Static} markup to retrieve system color.
As per above example, if your application running and
MenuHighlightBrush color is changed in background then your application will
not display newly changed color. If you want to do so you can use
DynamicResource markup. DynamicResource will update resources dynamically whenever it
changed while your application is running. Let’s have a look on below code
snippet which used DynamicResource.
<Button Background="{DynamicResource {x:Static SystemColors.MenuHighlightBrushKey}}"
Content="Click Me!!!"
Height="40" Width="150"
HorizontalAlignment="Center"
VerticalAlignment="Center">
</Button>
In above code I have used DynamicResource markup to display
resources dynamically. If MenuHighlightBrushKey changed in background then your application will display
newly changed value.
Here one thing to noticed that I have used resource key
in second example while in first example I have used brush. The reason behind
that is DynamicResource markup uses resource key.
Hope you liked this post. You can checkout below link to know more about System Colors
in WPF.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wpf/archive/2010/11/30/systemcolors-reference.aspx
See also –
