A few tips on customizing ListView in WM 6.5

priozersk — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:46:00 GMT

Would you like to have ListView control in your .NET CF application on Windows Mobile 6.5 to have this fancy gradient item selections (they are defined by the current theme on the device)?

The secret is in the extended style LVS_EX_THEME that needs to be applied to a ListView. It could be done by sending LVM_SETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE to the control. I've wrapped appropriate P/Invoke calls in the following extention method:

/// <summary>

/// Sets theme style to a listview

/// </summary>

/// <param name="listView">ListView instance</param>

public static void SetThemeStyle(this ListView listView)

{

// Retreive the current extended style

int currentStyle = SendMessage(listView.Handle,

(uint)LVM_GETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE, 0, 0);

// Assign the LVS_EX_THEM style

SendMessage(listView.Handle, (uint)LVM_SETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE, 0,

currentStyle | LVS_EX_THEME);

}

But wait there's more... While looking up the values for the P/Invoke messages in the commctrl.h, my eyes cought the forgotten LVM_SETBKIMAGE message which could be used to assign a background image to a ListView. This is how another extention method would look like:

/// <summary>

/// Sets background image to a listview

/// </summary>

/// <param name="listView">ListView instance.</param>

/// <param name="path">string path to an image.</param>

public static void SetBackgroundImage(this ListView listView, string path)

{

// Create bitmap

Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(path);

// Retrieve HBITMAP

IntPtr hBitmap = bitmap.GetHbitmap();

// Dispose the managed bitmap

bitmap.Dispose();

// Prepare structure

LVBKIMAGE lvImage = new LVBKIMAGE();

lvImage.hbm = hBitmap;

lvImage.ulFlags = LVBKIF_SOURCE_HBITMAP;

// Assign an image

SendMessage(listView.Handle, LVM_SETBKIMAGE, 0, ref lvImage);

}

The SetBackroundImage method should also work on all WM 6.0 - 6.5 devices.

The way you can use these methods should be pretty obvious:

this.listView1.SetThemeStyle();

this.listView1.SetBackgroundImage(@"\My Documents\My Pictures\Water.jpg");

And the resulting screenshot:

As usual you can download the demo project that contains all the code including P/Invoke declarations.

WM 6.5 Develper Tool Kit

priozersk — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:37:00 GMT

The Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit is available for download. It includes the Emulator images as well as the documentation and the samples on Gesture APIs.

Enjoy!

Alex Yakhnin's Blog : WM 6.5 SDK

A few tips on customizing ListView in WM 6.5

WM 6.5 Develper Tool Kit