Native Controls

Actipro Themes includes styles and templates for all native WPF controls that have been given a more modernized appearance, and mesh perfectly with Actipro's custom control products.

The native WPF control styles use the same common asset resource (brush, thickness, etc.) pool as with our other custom WPF controls. Thus, no matter which native or Actipro controls you use together, the appearance will consistently look great.

Using Native Styles and Templates

The Style for each native control can be applied either explicitly or implicitly. In most situations, applying the styles implicitly is the best approach, as this provides consistency across your application.

Implicit Styles

The native control styles can be applied implicitly by simply setting ThemeManager.AreNativeThemesEnabled to true. The theme manager will automatically load the necessary implicit styles into the application resources, which will therefore be used by your entire application.

ThemeManager.AreNativeThemesEnabled = true;

Note

See the Getting Started topic for a complete example of how to use this setting, as well as how to combine it with other settings.

While not recommended due to additional resources needing to be loaded at run-time, it is also possible to implicitly apply the native control styles to part of the visual tree. This sample code shows how to enable native for myControl and its descendents only:

ThemeManager.SetAreNativeThemesEnabled(myControl, true);

Explicit Styles

The native control styles can also be applied explicitly on each individual control, using an associated ComponentResourceKey defined in the SharedResourceKeys class.

For example, the SharedResourceKeys.ButtonBaseStyleKey can be applied a RepeatButton like so:

xmlns:themes="http://schemas.actiprosoftware.com/winfx/xaml/themes"
...
<RepeatButton Content="Click Me" Style="{DynamicResource {x:Static themes:SharedResourceKeys.ButtonBaseStyleKey}}" />

For a complete list of the support native control styles, see the table in the following section.

Style Keys for Native Controls

This list shows the style resource keys that are available in SharedResourceKeys for use with native controls:

Style Resource Key	Description
ButtonBaseStyleKey	Applies to `ButtonBase` controls and its derivations, which includes `Button`, `RepeatButton`, and `ToggleButton`.
CheckBoxStyleKey	Applies to `CheckBox` controls.
ComboBoxStyleKey	Applies to `ComboBox` controls.
ComboBoxItemStyleKey	Applies to `ComboBoxItem` controls.
ContextMenuStyleKey	Applies to `ContextMenu` controls.
DocumentViewerStyleKey	Applies to `DocumentViewer` controls.
ExpanderStyleKey	Applies to `Expander` controls. Note that this style uses expand/collapse animation by default, which can lead to performance issues while expanding/collapsing when there are an enormous number of elements within the expanded content. Set the attached `ThemeProperties.IsAnimationEnabled` dependency property to `false` on the `Expander` to prevent animation.
GridSplitterStyleKey	Applies to `GridSplitter` controls.
GridViewColumnHeaderStyleKey	Applies to `GridViewColumnHeader` controls.
GroupBoxStyleKey	Applies to `GroupBox` controls.
HyperlinkStyleKey	Applies to `Hyperlink` controls.
LabelStyleKey	Applies to `Label`.
ListBoxStyleKey	Applies to `ListBox` controls.
ListBoxItemStyleKey	Applies to `ListBoxItem` controls.
ListViewStyleKey	Applies to `ListView` controls.
ListViewItemStyleKey	Applies to `ListViewItem` controls.
MenuStyleKey	Applies to `Menu` controls.
MenuItemStyleKey	Applies to `MenuItem` controls. In addition, there are several keys that reference control templates for the various types of menu items: MenuItemTopLevelHeaderTemplateKey MenuItemTopLevelItemTemplateKey MenuItemSubmenuContentTemplateKey MenuItemSubmenuHeaderTemplateKey MenuItemSubmenuItemTemplateKey
PasswordBoxStyleKey	Applies to `PasswordBox` controls.
ProgressBarStyleKey	Applies to `ProgressBar` controls.
RadioButtonStyleKey	Applies to `RadioButton` controls.
ResizeGripStyleKey	Applies to `ResizeGrip` controls.
ScrollBarStyleKey	Applies to `ScrollBar` controls.
ScrollViewerStyleKey	Applies to `ScrollViewer` controls.
SeparatorStyleKey	Applies to `Separator` controls.
SliderStyleKey	Applies to `Slider` controls.
StatusBarStyleKey	Applies to `StatusBar` controls.
StatusBarItemStyleKey	Applies to `StatusBarItem` controls.
TabControlStyleKey	Applies to `TabControl` controls.
TabItemStyleKey	Applies to `TabItem` controls.
TextBoxBaseStyleKey	Applies to `TextBoxBase` controls and its derivations, which includes `TextBox` and `RichTextBox`.
ThumbStyleKey	Applies to `Thumb` controls.
ToolBarStyleKey	Applies to `ToolBar` controls.
ToolBarTrayStyleKey	Applies to `ToolBarTray` controls.
ToolTipStyleKey	Applies to `ToolTip` controls.
TreeViewStyleKey	Applies to `TreeView` controls.
TreeViewItemStyleKey	Applies to `TreeViewItem` controls and its derivations.
WindowStyleKey	Applies to `Window` controls.

Embedded Style Keys for Native Controls

Several native controls, such as ToolBar, require different styles for controls hosted or "embedded" inside it.

This list shows the embedded style resource keys that are available in SharedResourceKeys for use with Menu controls:

Style Resource Key	Description
MenuEmbeddedScrollViewerStyleKey	Applies to `ScrollViewer` controls.
MenuEmbeddedSeparatorStyleKey	Applies to `Separator` controls.

StatusBar

This list shows the embedded style resource keys that are available in SharedResourceKeys for use with StatusBar controls:

Style Resource Key	Description
StatusBarEmbeddedResizeGripStyleKey	Applies to `ResizeGrip` controls.
StatusBarEmbeddedSeparatorStyleKey	Applies to `Separator` controls.
StatusBarEmbeddedSliderDecreaseButtonBaseStyleKey	Applies to `ButtonBase` controls and its derivations, which includes `Button`, `RepeatButton`, and `ToggleButton`.
StatusBarEmbeddedSliderIncreaseButtonBaseStyleKey	Applies to `ButtonBase` controls and its derivations, which includes `Button`, `RepeatButton`, and `ToggleButton`.
StatusBarEmbeddedSliderStyleKey	Applies to `Slider` controls.

This list shows the embedded style resource keys that are available in SharedResourceKeys for use with ToolBar controls:

Style Resource Key	Description
ToolBarEmbeddedButtonBaseStyleKey	Applies to `ButtonBase` controls and its derivations, which includes `Button`, `RepeatButton`, and `ToggleButton`.
ToolBarEmbeddedComboBoxStyleKey	Applies to `ComboBox` controls.
ToolBarEmbeddedMenuStyleKey	Applies to `Menu` controls.
ToolBarEmbeddedPopupButtonStyleKey	Applies to PopupButton controls.
ToolBarEmbeddedSeparatorStyleKey	Applies to `Separator` controls.
ToolBarEmbeddedTextBoxStyleKey	Applies to `TextBox` controls.

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