Dark Theme

[maforget]

Here is a placeholder for work on a Dark Theme.

Is it even possible with Winforms?

[maforget]

Examples from the community.

A good Color is

this.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(32,32,32);
this.ForeColor = Color.White;

[Totengeist]

I finally installed VS 2022 Community and got my first debug build working, so I'm going to try to take a look at this. As you said, this is a big codebase, and I'm still learning where everything is, but I've identified where the settings are and where the colors are being set. Now to find how the two might connect…

Would you want a predefined Dark Mode, or are you looking to support some user customization? Right now, I'm thinking we add a checkbox to the settings and set defaults in config.xml. Any savvy people could then mess with the colors there.

[maforget]

Let em give you some pointers for having check a little bit and the problem I see with this. If you start with the MainForm and check the types of the Control. You end up with some Views like the ComicBrowserControl, ComicListLibraryBrowser ComicListFolderFilesBrowser. You find out both uses the ItemView & the TreeView that is in cYo.Common.WIndows.Forms. One View goes into a panel, that goes into another Control. Some types aren't even defined in the Designer, but into the code at some point. Very confusing, I haven't all mapped out the maze yet myself😂. Some even seems empty.

So you can go into ItemView & TreeView (TreeViewEx inherits from this one) and add a ForeGround Color there. Problem arrives where certain of these view also set a ForeGround color, hiding the one set my the underlying one. So if you remove these colors where they are set, you start getting something nice.

Problem arroses with the TabBar, i've googled a little bit and it seems it is not possible to set the color on this control. We will have to probably create a TabBar that inherits the original and override the OnPaint method.

Then there are the Forms, I would do something similar. Just create our own Form that we can set the color at this one place and not all over the place. I believe that a DarkForm already exists somewhere on the net when I checked years ago.

Problem I see with this is trying to not have to add hundreds of check all over the place to set the Dark Mode. We should keep them in the least possible places for easier editing. Maybe even just create our own Control type (All winforms element inherit from that).

I saw online ideas of going through the Controls collection that is supposed to contains all the control in the forms and changing the color there. Sometimes the Control, has many other Control under them in it's own Controls. It would be recursive. But I think this approach needs some fixing, because some Control aren't added in the Controls library on Initialization.

At that point I would settle with just a checkbox in the drop-down menu like Enable Dark Mode. If we do change the color that would be set in the ComicRack.ini. Just add a new property in the ExtendedSettings for it.

[maforget]

I've found an elegant solution to the dark mode, this will probably be temporary though. So I don't know if there is any point pushing further. The solution is based on this:

https://github-com.translate.goog/NikolayXHD/Mtgdb/wiki/.NET-WinForms-easy-color-scheme?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en-US
There is an even better solution here based on the above:
gitextensions/gitextensions#7213

The reason it is temporary is that:

1. It won't work with .NET 5+ (the above program gitextensions doesn't have it anymore since they upgraded to .NET 5+)
2. A WAY better solution is coming (hopefully soon). In .NET 9, there should be a built-in solution to have winforms follow the system theme. Info here: [API Suggestion] Introduce Modern Visual Styles for Apps targeting .NET 11+ and Win 11+ for A11Y improvements. (Was DarkMode/VisualStyles) dotnet/winforms#7641 & Enable DarkMode Theming dotnet/winforms#10985

So I will probably just wait for the release with .NET 9 and in the mean time work on migrating to .NET. Most projects seem to like they are waiting for that.

---

My current WIP based on replacing the SystemColors has been uploaded to the fork darkMode. There is still some work to do:

You use it by starting with -dark (or Add UseDarkMode = true) to the ComicRack.ini file

• Annoying white border around everything.
• Progress bar not showing.
• Some Controls like ComboBox aren't completely dark.
• Some Controls like CheckedListBoxEx have the BackColor still white. This looks like TreeViewEx where even if the BackColor is already correct (because we changed the SystemColors), we still need to update it manually to force a redraw. Maybe there another way to force a redraw?
• Some buttons are still in dark text on white backcolor.
• Columns header are white text on white background.
• Colors still needs to be tweaked right now everything is the same shade. Like the unselected tab vs selected are the same shade.

[maforget]

.NET 9 Finally has experimental Dark Mode support for winforms.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/whats-new/net90?view=netdesktop-9.0#dark-mode

[yegods]

Is this still being worked on? Should I wait patiently, or try out the dark mode fork mentioned above?

[maforget]

Haven't touched it since I created that branch. The solution is a very hacky way to do it. It would read the internal list of colors from the framework and change the value. It doesn't work for everything and a lot still needs to be fixed. I also disabled some settings that I later found might affect the high DPI scaling. Something that is still problematic.

So I've been waiting for Microsoft to implement native dark mode directly in winforms. Now that it's been released it might be the better solution.

That would require upgrading to .NET 9. It should not be a big problem except for some small changes, but what I am worried about is that upgrading might break existing plugins. I really don't want to break plugins that will probably never be updated.

So either I try to fix this hacky way, upgrade to .NET 9 and try the experimental dark mode or just try to implement our own dark mode.

I do want a dark mode, and have tried at a couple of occasion to implement it, but never found an acceptable solution. I haven't had the motivation to return to it. Hopefully someone could take it up or has some idea that might work better.

[extracampine]

Any progress with this? The app seriously needs a dark mode!

[maforget]

Don't hold your breath. If there is an update it will be posted, just read the message just above that states what the situation is.