Disable ComboBox Without Changing Appearance

Question

Is there a way to disable changing the value of a ComboBox in WPF without giving it the visual properties of a disabled ComboBox? For example, I know that for a text field you can set the IsReadOnly property to true. Doing this for a ComboBox however, does not prevent the user from selecting a different value.

Answer 1

Are you sure this is a good idea from a usability/conventions standpoint? If your goal is readability, perhaps you can change the disabled color to bump up the contrast a bit.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/wpf/thread/45dd7614-326b-4a51-b809-d25a3ff1ade8/

Anyway, I suspect you could write an onChange event handler to reset the value to the previous entry.

Answer 2

You can set the Foreground and Background colors and that seems to override the disabled colors. The drop down button shows as disabled which is good.

EDIT My code I tested with in IE 6/Kaxaml.

<Page
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"&gt;
  <StackPanel>
  <ComboBox  Foreground="black" Background="white" IsEditable="True" Text="Hello" IsEnabled="false">
  <ComboBoxItem>Test1</ComboBoxItem>
  <ComboBoxItem>Test2</ComboBoxItem>
  <ComboBoxItem>Test3</ComboBoxItem>
  </ComboBox>
  </StackPanel>
</Page>

Answer 3

Im not sure if its the same in .net however back in the VB6 days i use to get a picture box, frame or other container (sorry off the top of my head i can't remember which). I would put the combobox within that. To the users it looks the same. When you disable the container this would lock out the combo box as well, leaving it looking normal.

Answer 4

While I agree that a disabled control should look disabled you could just set the ComboBox ControlTemplate to the standard one (or one your using) removing any of the standard functionality

eg This will give you a decent looking readonly combobox

  <ComboBox>
    <ComboBox.Template>
        <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type ComboBox}">
          <Grid>
            <Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ListBoxChrome x:Name="Border" Height="23" Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" BorderThickness="{TemplateBinding BorderThickness}" RenderFocused="{TemplateBinding IsKeyboardFocusWithin}" RenderMouseOver="{TemplateBinding IsMouseOver}"/>
            <TextBlock FontSize="{TemplateBinding FontSize}" VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Selected Item" Margin="5,0,0,0"></TextBlock>
          </Grid>
      </ControlTemplate>
    </ComboBox.Template>
  </ComboBox>

you'll need to include the following namespace

xmlns:Microsoft_Windows_Themes="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Aero"

Answer 5

Mr. Benages, I think setting IsHitTestVisible and Focusable to false on the ComboBox might do the trick. Hope this helps.