Themes compatability

[Gonzalo]

Are silverlight 4 themes compatible with telerik controls and viceversa?

Thanks

Gonzalo

[Dani]

Hi Gonzalo,

You cannot use MS Silverlight 4 themes on RadControls. RadControls have their own theming mechanism and can be themed with the eight themes that are shipped with the suite only. However, we have taken into consideration the need of consistency between RadControls and native MS controls - we provide styles for the following MS Silverlight (and WPF) controls: LisTBox, TextBox, ScrollViewer, RadioButton, CheckBox. You can theme these controls with each of the eight Telerik themes in the usual manner:

<ListBox telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Summer" Width="200">
   <ListBoxItem>item 1</ListBoxItem>
</ListBox>

I hope this helps.

Greetings,
Dani
the Telerik team

[Dan]

How can telerik themes be applied globally to every Silverlight standard control (textbox, listbox, checkbox etc.) in an application? Can it be done as in WPF with Styles in a resource dictionary? I attempted to apply this WPF example to Silverlight: http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/wpf/general-discussions/wpf-theme.aspx but compilation failed on 

telerik:ThemeResourceKey

Thanks in advance.

[Dani]

Hi Dan,

Telerik themes can be applied to MS controls via the usual syntax. For example:

<CheckBox telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Metro" />

You do not need any special method to apply Telerik themes to MS controls in Silverlight. If you wish to have the theme global, you can set an ApplicationTheme:

StyleManager.ApplicationTheme = new VistaTheme();
InitializeComponent();

The example you posted refers to the case when you wish to have both a theme and a Style applied to a control. Basically a Style would override the theme unless you base the style on the theme. In WPF this approach works well, but in SIlverlight it is not as reliable.

I hope this will be helpful.

Kind regards,
Dani
the Telerik team

[Dan]

I'm confused. Do I need to mark every MS checkbox in my application with  telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Metro"? Currently I apply the theme globally to all Rad controls with the line <telerik:MetroTheme x:Key="theme" IsApplicationTheme="True" />
in App.xaml. Does that single app.xaml line also apply the theme application-wide to MS controls? If not, is there a way to apply the Metro theme globally to all checkbox controls? If so, how?

[Dani]

Hello Dan,

I am sorry if given information was puzzling or misleading for you.

Basically, yes, you would need to set the theme to each CheckBox in your applciation. To avoid doing that, you could have an implicit style in App.xaml that, as mentioned earlier, you can base on an existing Telerik theme.

So, for a CheckBox, for example, you can have in App.xaml:

<Style TargetType="CheckBox" telerik:StyleManager.BasedOn="Metro" />

And for all RadControls, the ApplicationTheme will be working well:

public App()
      {
          this.Startup += this.Application_Startup;
          this.Exit += this.Application_Exit;
          this.UnhandledException += this.Application_UnhandledException;
          StyleManager.ApplicationTheme = new MetroTheme();
          InitializeComponent();
      }

I hope this information will give you a solution.


Greetings,
Dani
the Telerik team