ContextMenu ControlTemplate Example

Controls in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) have a ControlTemplate that contains the visual tree of that control. You can change the structure and appearance of a control by modifying the ControlTemplate of that control. There is no way to replace only part of the visual tree of a control; to change the visual tree of a control you must set the Template property of the control to its new and complete ControlTemplate.

This topic shows the ControlTemplate of the WPF ContextMenu control.

This topic contains the following sections.

• Prerequisites
• ContextMenu ControlTemplate Example
• Related Topics

Prerequisites

To run the examples in this topic, you should understand how to write WPF applications. For more information, see Get Started Using Windows Presentation Foundation. You should also understand how styles are used in WPF. For more information, see Styling and Templating.

ContextMenu ControlTemplate Example

While this example contains all of the elements that are defined in the ControlTemplate of a ContextMenu by default, the specific values should be thought of as examples.

<Style TargetType="ContextMenu">
  <Setter Property="SnapsToDevicePixels" Value="True"/>
  <Setter Property="OverridesDefaultStyle" Value="True"/>
  <Setter Property="Grid.IsSharedSizeScope" Value="true"/>
  <Setter Property="HasDropShadow" Value="True"/>
  <Setter Property="Template">
    <Setter.Value>
      <ControlTemplate TargetType="ContextMenu">
        <Border 
          Name="Border"
          Background="{StaticResource WindowBackgroundBrush}"
          BorderBrush="{StaticResource SolidBorderBrush}"
          BorderThickness="1" >
          <StackPanel IsItemsHost="True"
                      KeyboardNavigation.DirectionalNavigation="Cycle"/>
        </Border>
        <ControlTemplate.Triggers>
          <Trigger Property="HasDropShadow" Value="true">
            <Setter TargetName="Border" Property="Padding" Value="0,3,0,3"/>
            <Setter TargetName="Border" Property="CornerRadius" Value="4"/>
          </Trigger>
        </ControlTemplate.Triggers>
      </ControlTemplate>
    </Setter.Value>
  </Setter>
</Style>

The above example uses the following resources:

<SolidColorBrush x:Key="WindowBackgroundBrush" Color="#FFF" />

  ...

<SolidColorBrush x:Key="SolidBorderBrush" Color="#888" />

For the complete sample, see Styling with ControlTemplates Sample.

See Also

Concepts

Guidelines for Designing Stylable Controls

Other Resources

ControlTemplate Examples