Как изменить цвет вкладок tabcontrol

First of all you need to make a deriving class from TabControl. So far so good but now it gets dirty.

Because TabControl won’t call OnPaint, we have do override WndProc to handle the WM_PAINT message. In there we go ahead and paint our background with the color we like.

 protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
    {
        base.WndProc(ref m);
        if(m.Msg == (int) WindowsMessages.Win32Messages.WM_PAINT)
        {
            using (Graphics g = this.CreateGraphics())
            {
                //Double buffering stuff...
                BufferedGraphicsContext currentContext;
                BufferedGraphics myBuffer;
                currentContext = BufferedGraphicsManager.Current;
                myBuffer = currentContext.Allocate(g,
                   this.ClientRectangle);

                Rectangle r = ClientRectangle;

                //Painting background
                if(Enabled)
                    myBuffer.Graphics.FillRectangle(new SolidBrush(_backColor), r);
                else
                    myBuffer.Graphics.FillRectangle(Brushes.LightGray, r);

                //Painting border
                r.Height = this.DisplayRectangle.Height +1; //Using display rectangle hight because it excludes the tab headers already
                r.Y = this.DisplayRectangle.Y - 1; //Same for Y coordinate
                r.Width -= 5;
                r.X += 1;

                if(Enabled)
                    myBuffer.Graphics.DrawRectangle(new Pen(Color.FromArgb(255, 133, 158, 191), 1), r);
                else
                    myBuffer.Graphics.DrawRectangle(Pens.DarkGray, r);

                myBuffer.Render();
                myBuffer.Dispose();

                //Actual painting of items after Background was painted
                foreach (int index in ItemArgs.Keys)
                {
                    CustomDrawItem(ItemArgs[index]);
                }

            }
        }    
    }

Im doing further drawing in this method so it looks a little overkill for this problem but just ignore the unnecessary stuff.
Also notice the foreach loop. I’ll come to this later.

The Problem is that TabControl paints its items (the tab headers) before its own WM_PAINT so our background will be drawn on top, which renders them invisible. To solve this I made an EventHandler for DrawItem which looks as the following:

    private void DrawItemHandler(object sender, DrawItemEventArgs e)
    {
        //Save information about item in dictionary but dont do actual drawing
        if (!ItemArgs.ContainsKey(e.Index))
            ItemArgs.Add(e.Index, e);
        else
            ItemArgs[e.Index] = e;
    }

I am saving the DrawItemEventArgs into a dictionary (which is called «ItemArgs» in my case) so I can access them later. Thats where the foreach from a few seconds ago comes into play. It calls a method where I am painting the tab headers which takes the DrawItemEventArgs which we saved before as a parameter to paint the items in correct state and position.

So, in a nutshell we are intercepting the Drawing of tab headers to delay it until we are finished drawing the background.

This solution is not optimal but it works and its the only thing you can do to get more control over TabControl (lol) without painting it from scratch.

• Download source — 13 Kb

Introduction

Tabcontrol is not at all unknown to windows developers. Microsoft included
this control from Visual Studio to Visual Studio.NET SDK to enhance developers
productivity and end users better experience. I agree that our windows
development must flow some standard to give better user experience. Here I am
trying to give little more enhancement on control appearance if and only if
developer want to do it.

Background

This article is small in size and can apply in your different application
only if it must be a winform development. You can refer this article to update
your tab control’s appearances in your parent window.

By default or through any properties the existing VS.NET SDK won’t support
features which will enhance the appearances of tab pages like changing font
appearances , color,caption back color etc. Here what I am trying to do is ,
override a little and got into solution. So you can use this idea to enhance
your product or project.

If you feel this is good then don’t forget to vote and give put your
valuable suggestions.

If you check the property list of tabcontrol. You will came to to about
DrawMode property. DrawMode property decides that how
tabpages are drawn in your application. If you check the values then you will
came to that there is two values are there which is assignable for the property
DrawMode.

DrawMode Enumeration

Normal

This enumerated value will specify that operating system will decide to draw
on behalf of developers.

OwnerDrawn

This enumerated value will specify that developer is responsible for drawing
the appearance of tab page.

Suppose if you want to draw by yourself then you need to define event handler
for TabControl’s DrawItem Event.

Here also I am doing the same thing. Suppose it you want to change the
appearance of tabpage of any tabcontrol then you need to set

1. DrawMode property to OwnerDrawFixed.
2. Override the DrawItem event handler definition.

Source Code

private void tabControl1_DrawItem(object sender, 
  System.Windows.Forms.DrawItemEventArgs e)
   {
       try
        {
          
          
          Font f;
          
          Brush backBrush;
          
          Brush foreBrush;
          
          
          
          if(e.Index == this.tabControl1.SelectedIndex)
          {
          
          
          f = new Font(e.Font, FontStyle.Bold | FontStyle.Bold);
          f = new Font(e.Font,FontStyle.Bold);
          backBrush = new System.Drawing.SolidBrush(Color.DarkGray);
          foreBrush = Brushes.White;
        }
        else
        {
          f = e.Font;
          backBrush = new SolidBrush(e.BackColor); 
          foreBrush = new SolidBrush(e.ForeColor);
        }
          
          string tabName = this.tabControl1.TabPages[e.Index].Text;
          StringFormat sf = new StringFormat();
          sf.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center;
          
          

  }
}

Note

Full source code with an example is given with this article.