Develop Reference

Changing button's background color from another winform

I have this project that has quite a number of winforms and how do I change button background color or text color or any other attributes from another winform? I'm currently using delegate and this is not efficient as I will need to create a new delegate everytime I want to change a new attributes. Is there any better way to do it?

In the Designer, click on your button
Ensure that GenerateMember is true and Modifiers is public. Name the button using PascalCase, for example CancelButton
Now you can in some other form:
var formWithButton = new FormX();
formWithButton.CancelButton.BackColor = Color.Black;
If you have a large number of changes to make, perhaps consider a theming framework instead

Tags in WinForms TextBox

I want to create a textbox on a WinForms form, where the user cannot input text directly. Instead, the content of the textbox should only be "bubbles" (with a "delete" button), showing a text value.
I'm struggeling to find the correct term for this kind of control/behaviour. It should look a bit like the "Tags"-field on StackOverflow when creating a new question.
Are there any existing controls/settings that allow such behaviour? (I have DevExpress if that helps)
Sorry for the vague question, if i knew better terms for what i'm looking for, i'd probably find something...

Instead of a textbox, the container for your bubbles should most likely be a Panel.
You can style it as needed, set the border, background color, etc.
If you don't want to manually position the "bubbles" inside it, use a FlowLayoutPanel. It will automatically put it's children controls in a flow.
Check out the properties of the control to specify how you want controls to be laid out.
The individual bubbles can also be Panels or other container controlls, so that you can add a label and a button (or image to serve as a button) to each.
You might even extend the panel class to automatically add a label and a delete button to each.
something like this (please note this is more like pseudo code. I wrote it up of the top of my head here, some adjustment may be needed)
Public Bubble : Panel {
Public Bubble(string text) {
Label title = new Label { Text = text };
Controls.Add(title);
Button delete = new Button { Text = "Delete" };
Controls.Add(delete);
//also hook up events here, ie delete.click+= whatever
}
}
You can further extend the custom class for your specific needs.
Set styles on the button and label as needed to achive the look you want.
Don't forget to hook up events such as mouse over, button click, etc.
Then just fill the FlowLayoutPanel with these custom controls and you should be good to go

How to change the background image of a button when clicked in code?

There is a similar question like mine here in Stackoverflow but it only explains how to change it in XAML. I want to know how can I change it in code.
Here is a image that shows how I do it in XAML using Blend:
Link for full size: https://snag.gy/4Skk4.jpg
Basically I want to change the background of a button's pressed state in C# but I can't seem to find any examples on the Internet. It must be in code because sometimes the image of the button will change therefore the button's pressed image must change as well.
The following code is just to change the image of the button and it's just the start.
image.ImageSource = new System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage(new Uri(#"images/Button-warning-icon.png", UriKind.Relative));
image.Stretch = Stretch.Uniform;
buttonWarnings.Background = image;

If I understand you correctly, you are trying to change the appearance of the Button control in a "pressed" visual state.
I'm not near my dev computer to try it out, but to "unblock you" I'll give a direction.
First, as you noticed in your Blend screenshot, each visual state is represented with a Storyboard, which defines how various properties change. In your case, you're looking to change Background property.
The VisualStateGroups and their states are defined by the control. You can override them when you re-template the control. So, retemplate the button control using Blend with "Edit Template"->"Edit Copy".
Then, in code, you should be able to do the following:
1) Get visual states (this would not work unless you re-template the control, AFAIK)
var visualStateGroups = VisualStateManager.GetVisualStateGroups(buttonWarnings);
2) Get the VisualStateGroup of "CommonStates" from the visualStateGroups
collection
var commonStatesGroup = visualStateGroups.Find((g) => ((VisualStateGroup)g).Name == "CommonStates") as VisualStateGroup;
3) Get the "Pressed" VisualState:
var pressedVisualState = commonStatesGroup.Find((vs) => ((VisualState)vs).Name == "Pressed") as VisualState;
4) Change the storyboard of that state
pressedVisualState.Storyboard = newStoryboardWithCustomImageBackgroundProperty;
(Disclaimer: I'm not near in a computer to try it now - it's all in theory)

There are many examples to be found on the internet!
Take a look at some:
http://mobile.dzone.com/articles/windows-phone-buttonimage
http://loekvandenouweland.com/index.php/2011/01/windows-phone-image-button/

Actually its quite simple,
While in button pressed state....see part 3 in the image you uploaded above.
Above all the colors there is a row containing 5 icons.
Click on 4th icon.
it will show you option to choose image as background.

Reset label control in code behind to original XAML?

I have a C# WPF application with a bunch of labels.
When I run my program it does some checks and wether it the check was positive or not it sets it's corrisponding label to green og red.
These changes is done in my .cs file like:
lblCheck14.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
I would like to add a "Reset" button, that reset the application to it's initial start.
How can I easiest implement this?
One way - but I really hope there is a smarter way, is to set them all like:
lblCheck14.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);
lblCheck21.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);
lblCheck42.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);
Etc..
But isn't there a function which I can call that strips away any changes the .cs file have done to the controls in the XAML file? Like make the XAML back to stock?
Sorry for my back explanation. Hope you understand me :)
Best regards

Implement styles. You can have a default style to roll back to when you hit reset.
Take a look at this tutorial if you're unfamiliar with them: http://wpftutorial.net/Styles.html

Do not manipulate UIElements' properties in code. WPF is not winforms. As Yatrix's answer said, implement styles, or even datatemplates and triggers to manipulate different properties of different UIElements acording to some logic (defined in ViewModel or somewhere else). I suggest you to take a look at WPFTutorial.net

WP7 How do I change the image of a button when clicked

Right now I have a grid of six buttons, all with different images inside them. I have another set of six images, that are the original just with a gray tint to represent you selecting it. How do I change the image to the button to the new "selected image" when I select the button.
I am assuming you do it in the method:
private void button1_click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
}
I'm having trouble figuring out what to put inside here. Normally I would think it would be something like:
button1.image = "image path";
However when making a WP7 application you cannot use the image keyword. Any advice on how to change the image of a button when clicked?

Write where you want to change the image
var brush = new ImageBrush();
brush.ImageSource = new BitmapImage(new Uri("/Images/YourImage.png",
UriKind.Relative));
btn.Background = brush;

In Silverlight (upon which the Windows Phone 7 framework is built) the Button control does not have an Image property. I presume that you have created your original buttons by placing an Image element as the child of the Button. On the assumption that you want the same behavior for a whole set of buttons, then it might make sense to use visual states instead. You coudl achieve a consistent look-and-feel by changing the opacity of the ContentPresenter, e.g. An Opacity of 0.75 for the "Normal" state and and Opacity of 1.0 for the "Selected" state.
Determing which button is the selected one would be the trickier part, but if you wrap your buttons in a ListBox then you can use the "Selected" visual state in the ItemContainerStyle.
If you want to continue with the approach that you've already taken, then given that you know that the content of the button is an Image, you could do something like the following:
private void button1_click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
Button source = (Button)sender;
Image content = source.Content as Image;
if (null != content)
{
content.Source = new BitmapImage(new Uri("image path"));
}
}
In this approach you would, of course, also need to handle reverting the other buttons back to their "Normal" state, which the ListBox approach would handle for you.

What you're doing is a really good learning exercise - you'll learn lots about Silverlight by experimenting like this.
In addition to manually adjusting the image to match the button press state, I believe you can also achieve the effect you are looking for - that the button image becomes "gray" when pressed - you can do this using "Styles" and using "Behaviors". Take a look at posts like:
http://mstechno.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/silverlight-3-how-to-customize-a-button-with-expression-blend-3/
Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Change a button's background color on click
Some of the XAML in this might look daunting - and using Expression Blend takes some time to get used to - but you will get there. Good luck!