ListView background

Scott,

Cut and Pasted notes I had from searching awhile back on the subject.
I havn't tried it yet.

<<quote>>
The ListView control's appearance is particularly difficult to
customize due to the fact that the LVS_OWNERDRAWFIXED style is
only applicable to report-mode ListViews.

Further, handling the WM_DRAWITEM message is a major hassle since
every aspect of each item needs to be drawn manually.

What happens when you need to change only the color of a
particular item in another ViewStyle? Without Custom Draw,
you'd need to subclass the ListView and handle the WM_PAINT
message directly -- not a pretty task. In fact, handling
the WM_PAINT message requires almost a complete rewrite of
the entire control's drawing mechanism. This is obviously
not a good solution for changing only a small aspect of the
ListView's appearance. Luckily with the release of comctl32
version 4.70 (IE3) Microsoft introduced the Custom Draw
service.

For a brief primer on Custom Draw, search the MSDN "Custom Draw".

To use the Custom Draw service, you need to handle the WM_NOTIFY
message and test the code member of the NMHDR member of the
NMCUSTOMDRAW structure (sent as the LParam) for the
NM_CUSTOMDRAW notification. Also, test the hwndFrom member of
the NMHDR to make sure the notification corresponds to the
target control. From there, simply test the drawing stage and
respond with the correct CDRF_* constant(response flag).
<<end quote>>

HTH
Regards, Jules

[This message has been edited by Jules Marchildon (edited June 06, 2000).]

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