How to use Brush from current theme

[Jaroslav Půbal]

We have simple app with "Ribbon" above and "Grid" below.
This app can change theme. So the Ribbon colors is changing.

But Grid Backgroung is always white.
Now we found this solution:


        <telerikRibbonBar:RadRibbonBar x:Name="Ribbon" />
        <StackPanel>
            <Grid  Background="{Binding Background, ElementName=Ribbon}">
                    <Controls3:RadButton Content="Button text" />
                </Grid>
        </StackPanel>


Is there better solution? Is it possible reference theme brush without have any Telerik components on the form (user control).

[Pana]

Hi Jaroslav Půbal,

When you set StyleManager.Theme on a Control in Silverlight the StyleManagers finds a Style in the Theme ResourceDictionaries that can be applied on the Control and sets the Control's Style property. It is not possible to go there and search for a specific Key or otherwise use StaticResource to reference resource in the Themes.

Eventually you can get our theme projects and add styles in them for your custom ContentControl that you can use as Border and the Theme for it will just change the Background and BorderBrush. This will be overkill though if all you need is to set a brush depending on the selected theme.

Sincerely yours,
Panayot
the Telerik team

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[Alexey Oyun]

Is there better way to get to base theme colors. Like in winforms you can get system colors.
May be it is possible to add property theme colors.

[Pana]

Hi Alexey Oyun,

There is no easy way to access these colors. Eventually you can open the control's assembly with reflector and pick the brushes from its generic xaml for office_black. For the rest of the themes you can do the same with the theme assemblies. Eventually you can even merge one of those dictionaries in your app.xaml and reference the brushes as StaticResource but I haven't tried it yet. In that case you may get the styles from these resource dictionaries applied to all your controls since SL4 introduced Implicit Styling.

Greetings,
Panayot
the Telerik team

[Alexey Oyun]

Thank you for replay, I will try your suggested way.

Thanks, Alexey.

[Pana]

Hi Alexey Oyun,

If you have problems or need somewhat resources do not hesitate to contact us again.

Regards,
Panayot
the Telerik team

[Heidi]

Hello,
In fact, I have the same question as described above. My application has a Ribbon on top, and below it, 2 regions with a menu bar and a content. I'd like to have these regions to inherit the background color of the Ribbon.
When themes are switched, (which can happen in our future apps) , the background should switch along. Therefore I would not like to define it separately.

I tried the example in the first post, but my application does not agree that there is a 'background' in the control 'telerik:RadRibbonBar'.

Is there nowadays a better solution to keep this dynamic, and still use telerik keyed colors?

[Pana]

Hello Heidi,

Our theming mechanism does not support well such behavior. You will have to set Background to your user controls in code behind.

Best wishes,
Pana
the Telerik team

[Heidi]

Too bad it isn't supported! Will it be, in the future?

Isn't there some construction that an extra dictionary can reference to keys in the theme dll's of Telerik?

[Pana]

Hi Heidi,

We are researching such methods. In WPF you could use DynamicResource but Silverlight does not support them yet. We are waiting the release of SL5 to check upon the new features and will try to figure it out. For now the only feasible way would be to create a home brew Background setting mechanism.

Greetings,
Pana
the Telerik team