Net4x.MetroFramework.Library 1.4.0.26250

Net4x.MetroFramework.Library

Modern UI ("Metro") controls for Windows Forms — a themed control set, a light and a dark theme, and a borderless form that draws its own chrome.

This is a maintained fork of MetroFramework by Sven Walter, repackaged for current .NET while keeping the original API.

Install

dotnet add package Net4x.MetroFramework.Library

Two companion packages are optional:

Target frameworks

net45, net6.0-windows, net8.0-windows, net10.0-windows. Windows only — it is built on Windows Forms and GDI+.

Getting started

Derive your form from MetroForm and drop Metro controls onto it:

using MetroFramework.Controls;
using MetroFramework.Forms;

public class MainForm : MetroForm
{
    public MainForm()
    {
        Text = "Dashboard";
        Style = MetroColorStyle.Teal;
        Theme = MetroThemeStyle.Dark;

        var save = new MetroButton
        {
            Text = "Save",
            Location = new Point(20, 80),
            Highlight = true
        };
        save.Click += (_, _) => Save();

        Controls.Add(save);
    }
}

MetroForm paints its own title bar and border, so set the caption through Text and the chrome through BorderStyle, DisplayHeader, Movable, Resizable and ShadowType rather than the inherited FormBorderStyle.

Theming

Every control carries Style (the accent colour) and Theme (light or dark). Leaving either at Default means inherit, so you normally set them in one place.

var styleManager = new MetroStyleManager
{
    Style = MetroColorStyle.Orange,
    Theme = MetroThemeStyle.Dark,
    Owner = this          // applies to this form and everything inside it
};

MetroStyleManager walks the whole control tree — including nested containers, tab pages and context menus — and keeps applying itself to controls added later. A control that sets Style or Theme explicitly keeps its own value; one left on Default follows the manager.

The accent colours are Black, White, Silver, Blue (the default), Green, Lime, Teal, Orange, Brown, Pink, Magenta, Purple, Red and Yellow. MetroColors exposes them directly, and MetroPaint.GetStyleColor(style) maps an enum value onto one.

Set UseStyleColors on a control to paint its text in the accent colour, or UseCustomBackColor / UseCustomForeColor to take over its colours entirely.

To theme controls that are not part of this library, use MetroStyleExtender: it adds an ApplyMetroTheme property to every plain Windows Forms control on the form.

Controls

Input — MetroButton, MetroCheckBox, MetroRadioButton, MetroToggle, MetroComboBox, MetroTextBox, MetroTrackBar, MetroLink

Display — MetroLabel, MetroTile, MetroProgressBar, MetroProgressSpinner

Layout — MetroPanel, MetroTabControl, MetroTabPage, MetroUserControl, MetroScrollBar

Forms — MetroForm, MetroTaskWindow, MetroMessageBox

Components — MetroStyleManager, MetroStyleExtender, MetroToolTip

HTML rendering — HtmlLabel, HtmlPanel, HtmlToolTip render a subset of HTML and CSS, for text that needs inline markup.

Custom painting

Each control raises CustomPaintBackground, CustomPaint and CustomPaintForeground during its paint cycle. The event argument carries the resolved colours and the Graphics surface, so you can draw over the Metro look without subclassing:

tile.CustomPaintForeground += (sender, e) =>
    e.Graphics.DrawImage(icon, new Rectangle(8, 8, 32, 32));

MetroPaint exposes the same colour tables the controls use — for example MetroPaint.BackColor.Form(theme) or MetroPaint.BorderColor.Button.Hover(theme) — along with GetStringFormat and GetTextFormatFlags for aligning your own text the way the framework does.

Fonts

Text is rendered in Segoe UI. Add Net4x.MetroFramework.Fonts and the bundled Open Sans faces are substituted automatically on machines that do not have Segoe UI, so layouts stay consistent. Nothing else changes: the resolver is discovered at runtime and there is no code to write.

MetroFonts exposes the scale the controls use, should you need it directly: MetroFonts.Title, MetroFonts.Subtitle, and per-widget helpers such as MetroFonts.Label(MetroLabelSize.Medium, MetroLabelWeight.Regular).

Notes

• Strong-named, and signed with the same key across all three packages.
• Source Link is enabled, so stepping into the library works from a debugger.
• MetroForm needs a Windows Forms message loop; the drop shadow and task window create real top-level windows.

Licence

MIT. Copyright (c) 2011 Sven Walter. Open Sans is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, and the bundled HTML renderer derives from Jose Menendez Poo's A Professional HTML Renderer You Will Use (BSD).