Sorry for posting this here, but I didn't see any thread for the ComboEditor or "other" under the WinForms section. And I'll admit right up front that the problem may well be just my inexperience with the tools... (I'm using Netadvantage 2008 vol 3)
Regardless of what I've tried, I can't seem to get the control to accept my settings for the dropdown button itself. In the "ButtonAppearance" group I set the BackColor and Forecolor I'm wanting the dropdown button to be... but to no avail. It just ignores my settings regardless of DisplayStyle and\or ButtonStyle I choose. Currently I'm using the Office2007 DisplayStyle and the Default ButtonStyle. I'm not sure that the ButtonStyle even refers to the dropdown button since there aren't any visual changes to the dropdown button no matter what you set this option to.
I would PREFER to use the Standard DisplayStyle but, for some strange reason, it won't let me set the BorderColor. And again, no matter what DisplayStyle I use, I can't set the dropdown button appearance to what I want. Why?
I find it rather odd that various components of an object, such as the BorderColor for instance, are settable under SOME DisplayStyles but not others. What's the reason for this irrational behavior?
By the way, I CHOSE Infragistics control suite over the competitors mainly because Infragistics gave me much more control over far more aspects of a controls appearance than the competitors. Here's a thought I'd like the Infragistics programmers to keep in mind as they develop the controls... As a developer, I want to be ABLE to control EVERY visual aspect of a control. EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL visual component of a control SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE SET by the developer. If it's visible, then by golly, one of us idiotic developers are going to want to set it to our personal preference...
Overall, I've been fairly happy with the controls. But in the few instances when I don't seem to have any control over a certain visual aspect of an object, I get irritated and wonder WHY, since you've gone to all the effort to provide control over MOST aspects, WHY not finish the job and make sure I can control ALL aspects?
Thanx in advance for your help and response.
Generally one of the most common issues with appearance-related properties not taking effect is due to a different property preventing their setting, such as UseOsThemes or UseFlatMode (with the former being the more frequent culprit). In the case of the Office2007 DisplayStyle, however, I can't seem to get the different user-level appearances from overriding the default appearance that is resolved for Office2007 (or some of the other DisplayStyles). I'm not certainly whether this is deliberate or not, since if you set UseFlatMode to True, you have full control over the appearance of the buttons. You might be able to accomplish something similar to the Office2007 appearance (with your own colors) by setting BackColor and BackColor2, then the BackGradientStyle to one of the glass-types (i.e. GlassTop50Bright).
You also may want to submit an incident to Developer Support so that it can be determined why the appearances aren't being applied with the Office2007 DisplayStyle.
-Matt
Hey Thanx Matt,
Sorry it took so long for me to respond. Turning OSThemes OFF, UseFlatStyle ON, and DisplayStyle DEFAULT gave me what I was looking for. I still think that REGARDLESS of any of those settings, I SHOULD be able to OVERIDE the defaults by specifying a particular setting.
Now the only thing I can't seem to change is the "highlight" fore and back colors; as when you "select" all the text in the box and\or run the mouse over the Items in the dropdown list. Any suggestions on that?
Regarding the edit portion of the control, we use a TextBox control in there, and for a TextBox those colors are only customizable through the Windows Appearance Settings applet, i.e., they equate to SystemColors.Highlight/HighlightText and cannot be changed through our public object model.
Give what I stated in the previous paragraph this might be a moot point, but the highlight that is applied to the items can be changed using Application Styling; the role name is ValueListItem. You would want to change the appearance's BackColor for the Selected state.