How can I easily keep consistent UI settings in C# Winform application?

Question

I have a lot of different UserControls and would like to maintain consistent UI settings (mainly colors and fonts). My first try was this:

public class UISettings
{
//...
    public void SetupUserControl(ref UserControl ctrl)
    {
        ctrl.BackColor = this.BackColor;
    }
}

to be called in every control like this:

settings.SetupUserControl(ref this);

As this is read-only it cannot be passed by ref argument so this does not work. What are other options to keep consistent UI without manually changing properties for every item?

Answer 1

How about a base class which provides such settings?

Answer 2

Do the same thing. Don't pass it by ref. UserControl is a reference object already, so there's no need to pass it into your method using the ref keyword.

You may also want to consider a recursive method that will find all the UserControls on the form and pass it into your method.

Answer 3

Inheritance! If you have a form or control that will constantly be using the same styles and you want to set that as your base, just create your own user controls that inherit from a form/control. By default all of your forms will inherit from "Form". Instead of inheriting from the default form, create a new user control that inherits from Form, and then have that as your base class.

CustomForm : Form // Your custom form.

Form1 : CustomForm // Inherit from it.

...the same works for components. If you want a button to have the same styles across the board, create a user control and have it inherit from the button control -- then use the custom control.

Whenever you want to make a change to your base styles, or any settings, simply change your custom controls settings -- your new forms/controls will automatically be updated!