Change TextColor of disabled button (failed after following suggested answer)

Question

After reading this post: Change TextColor of disabled control I follow Hans Olsson answer: "However, if you want to do it properly you need to make them Owner-draw or override the OnPaint event and draw the text yourself." So I write the function:

    private void button_resetRelay3_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
{
    Debug.WriteLine("button_resetRelay3_Paint");
    if (true == comboBox_F3OnOffParam.Text.ToUpper().Equals("ON"))
    {
        button_setRelay3.ForeColor = Color.White;
        Debug.WriteLine("Color.White");
    }
    else
    {
        button_setRelay3.ForeColor = System.Drawing.SystemColors.ControlText;
        Debug.WriteLine("Color.ControlText");
    }
}

Despite that I always have the forecolor as gray despite the "Debug.WriteLine("Color.White");" is correctly displayed... Note: the button is Disable. No problem to change color when the button is Enable.

Do you have any suggestion?

Answer 1

Here's a lightweight extended class that uses ControlPaint.DrawButton to render the blank button so that you can cleanly draw the colored text over it.

protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
{
    if (Enabled)
    {
        base.OnPaint(e);
    }
    else
    {
        var buttonState = Enabled ? ButtonState.Normal : ButtonState.Inactive;
        ControlPaint.DrawButton(e.Graphics, ClientRectangle, buttonState);

        Color textColorWithTransparency = 
            Color.FromArgb(
                0xA0,                   
                ForeColorDisabled);
                
        using (var brush = new SolidBrush(textColorWithTransparency))
        {
            e.Graphics.DrawString(
                Text,
                Font,
                brush,
                ClientRectangle,
                new StringFormat
                {
                    Alignment = StringAlignment.Center,
                    LineAlignment = StringAlignment.Center
                });
        }
    }
}

You can set the disabled fore color in the designer:

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You will want to manually change instances of Button in the designer to instances of ButtonEx.

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