Colorful combo box

[tonyrueb]

I am making a program to calculate the resistance of a resistor. If you do not know resistors have a color code by the rings of colors. I made a combo box with all the colors printed on it but I’m looking for a way to change the colors of the text so that the text Red will be in a red font. I need every color to be different in the same combo box. Is this possible? If so how?

[MrPolite]

yea it's possible. You need to search for "owner drawn combo box" and read some basic articles. You have to change the DrawMode property of your combo box and do the drawing manually. Search on www.codeproject.com perhaps

[tonyrueb]

I can’t seem to find any thing related to visual basic. A lot of C# and C++.

[MrPolite]

don't have time right now otherwise I'd just do it
a quick search... see if it helps
http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/8014/0/page/3

[tonyrueb]

Ok I am a beginner to visual basic or programming in general. I have never done an owner drawn combo box before. This is all new to me. I have a list of colors I need. I do like the link you gave me but I just don’t understand it.

The colors I need are:
Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Grey, White. I would prefer it to be in this order, because the index number works well with the math. But I can do it other ways.

If anyone can find me a better example, or have time to write some code I would greatly apprentice it.

[meboz]

Private Sub ComboBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ComboBox1.SelectedIndexChanged
 
Dim cboSender As ComboBox
cboSender = CType(sender, ComboBox)
 
Select Case cboSender.SelectedIndex
    Case Color.Black
        cboSender.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Black
    Case Color.Brown
        cboSender.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Brown
    Case Color.Red
        cboSender.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red
    Case Color.Orange
        cboSender.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Orange
    Case Color.Yellow
        cboSender.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Yellow
 
    'rest of the cases
 
End Select
End Sub
 
Private Enum Color
             Black
    Brown
    Red
    Orange
    Yellow
    Green
    Blue
    Violet
    Gray
    White
End Enum

[tonyrueb]

I hope I’m not being too picky, what I really want is the text color to change for every item when you pull it down, not after you select an item. But I do like the ideal of changing the back color meboz. I can use that for another program.

I guess it is not that important, it would be nice if we could get it to work that way, and it doesn’t serve any practical purpose just for looks.

[meboz]

For the text color to be different for each item you need to do what MrPolite has suggested : )

PS. If we weren't picky, we wouldn't be programmers...

[tonyrueb]

Ok, that makes me feel better, but can any one explain to me how I can do this in a better way then the site does. Code with comments would be great.