how to change a color in listbox

gavriel ankri

hello
I am building a chat client with a listbox
I want that each client will choose his own text color in the chat
I did it in this way:

void cc_ReadMsgEvent(MessageFormat card)
    {
        UpdateListBox(card.ToString());
        listBox1.ForeColor = card.myColor;
      }

However, when I do it, it changes the color of all the text in the listbox, and I want to change the color
only of one line each time.    how can I do it ?

thank you

8 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Frogleg15y ago
Accepted answer
Here's a listview sample
Praveen Kumar15y ago
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/Alex/DotNETColorListBox11292005042525AM/DotNETColorListBox.aspx
Anil Kumar15y ago
And Frogleg has given the way how to use card.myColor in his nice attachment.
Anil Kumar15y ago
Listview give you option to have mulitcolumns and more options on items at individual column levels. But it go slower if your number of items are heavy.

Since you are working on chat screen, use lightweight ListBox. But if you are looking for appearance/style etc. then go for ListView.
gavriel ankri15y ago
Is it easier to do it with a ListView instead of ListBox ?
gavriel ankri15y ago
thank you for the answer!
can you show me how to change the color depending on what the user choosed ?
I mean how can I fit card.MyColor into this code ?

thank you!
Vulpes15y ago
To do this with the standard Windows Forms ListBox, you'll need to draw the items yourself in the appropriate color.

I'm not sure how this will fit in with your application as you're using a custom MessageFormat class but here's how to do it in a simple case.

First set the ListBox's DrawMode property to OwnerDrawFixed.

Then double click on its DrawItem event in the Properties Box to open up a skeleton handler and insert the following code. This will change the text color of the first three items to red, green and blue and leave the remainder (if any) as black:

private void listBox1_DrawItem(object sender, DrawItemEventArgs e)
{
e.DrawBackground();
Brush myBrush = Brushes.Black;

switch (e.Index)
{
case 0:
myBrush = Brushes.Red;
break;
case 1:
myBrush = Brushes.Green;
break;
case 2:
myBrush = Brushes.Blue;
break;
}

e.Graphics.DrawString(listBox1.Items[e.Index].ToString(),
e.Font, myBrush, e.Bounds, StringFormat.GenericDefault);
e.DrawFocusRectangle();
}

Anil Kumar15y ago

Try it by Items attribute property

listBox1.Items[indexNo].Attributes.CssStyle.Add("font-weight", card.myColor);