Wednesday, January 17, 2007
In an older post I highlighted one of the changes in the TreeView control in Vista’s explorer:
If you take a further look at the explorer TreeView you’ll notice that in addition to the autoscroll functionality previously described, there are also some aesthetic changes:
1. The selected TreeNode has a highlight rectangle but it is not the heavy blue that it was on legacy versions of Windows.
2. When hovering over non-selected TreeNodes, the node under the mouse also gets a very light blue rectangle.
3. Rather than ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ signs before each node (used for expanding/collapsing) it has some small triangles (filled with black, empty or highlighted with blue).
E.g. in the following picture the “inetpub” folder is highlighted while my mouse is over the “logs” folder:
So I was looking at how I can make my managed TreeView have the same feel and look. The answer is in the Vista MSDN forums: you have to call SetWindowTheme API from the uxtheme.dll as follows:
As an aside, you can use this exact code with the ListView control as well :-)
Note that for the managed TreeView you also have to set to
So, next thing I noticed is that the explorer TreeView also auto hides the +/- replacements i.e. it auto hides the little triangles. It was easier finding out how to achieve that since I had already seen a list of new Vista TreeView constants which is where the inspiration for the blog entry on TVS_EX_AUTOHSCROLL came from. The answer is to add to the TreeView's extended style the TVS_EX_FADEINOUTEXPANDOS:
I have updated the two code files, which I posted last time, to incorporate these additions and you can get them from the same place: NativeMethods.cs and TreeViewVista.cs (the comments in the code are self-explanatory I hope).
Finally, note that you can pick and choose which feature you want. For example Windows Mail on Vista clearly sets the “explorer” theme (and HotTracking=true and ShowLines=false), but does not set the extended styles at all (so no auto-fading and no auto-scrolling)...
"...the treeview has no horizontal scrollbar at the bottom and scrolling happens for you automatically as you select nodes that are not fully visible and as you mouse over around..."I then offered some code that makes the
System.Windows.Forms.TreeView control behave the same way.If you take a further look at the explorer TreeView you’ll notice that in addition to the autoscroll functionality previously described, there are also some aesthetic changes:
1. The selected TreeNode has a highlight rectangle but it is not the heavy blue that it was on legacy versions of Windows.
2. When hovering over non-selected TreeNodes, the node under the mouse also gets a very light blue rectangle.
3. Rather than ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ signs before each node (used for expanding/collapsing) it has some small triangles (filled with black, empty or highlighted with blue).
E.g. in the following picture the “inetpub” folder is highlighted while my mouse is over the “logs” folder:
So I was looking at how I can make my managed TreeView have the same feel and look. The answer is in the Vista MSDN forums: you have to call SetWindowTheme API from the uxtheme.dll as follows:
SetWindowTheme(treeView1.Handle, "explorer", null);As an aside, you can use this exact code with the ListView control as well :-)
Note that for the managed TreeView you also have to set to
true the HotTracking property (and for identical look, to false the ShowLines property).So, next thing I noticed is that the explorer TreeView also auto hides the +/- replacements i.e. it auto hides the little triangles. It was easier finding out how to achieve that since I had already seen a list of new Vista TreeView constants which is where the inspiration for the blog entry on TVS_EX_AUTOHSCROLL came from. The answer is to add to the TreeView's extended style the TVS_EX_FADEINOUTEXPANDOS:
NativeMethods.SendMessage(treeView1.Handle,...of course to add the style rather than just set it, first you have to retrieve the existing style and then bitwise OR it with the TVS_EX_FADEINOUTEXPANDOS style.
NativeMethods.TVM_SETEXTENDEDSTYLE, 0,
NativeMethods.TVS_EX_FADEINOUTEXPANDOS);
I have updated the two code files, which I posted last time, to incorporate these additions and you can get them from the same place: NativeMethods.cs and TreeViewVista.cs (the comments in the code are self-explanatory I hope).
Finally, note that you can pick and choose which feature you want. For example Windows Mail on Vista clearly sets the “explorer” theme (and HotTracking=true and ShowLines=false), but does not set the extended styles at all (so no auto-fading and no auto-scrolling)...
Labels: Vista
# posted by The Moth @ 17:28 
Copyright © Daniel Moth
