How can I style the border and title bar of a window in WPF?

wpf xaml styling
Marcel Gosselin picture Marcel Gosselin · Apr 2, 2012 · Viewed 126.4k times · Source

We are developing a WPF application which uses Telerik's suite of controls and everything works and looks fine. Unfortunately, we recently needed to replace the base class of all our dialogs, changing RadWindow by the standard WPF window (reason is irrelevant to this discussion). In doing so, we ended up having an application which still looked pretty on all developer's computers (Windows 7 with Aero enabled) but was ugly when used in our client's environment (Terminal Services under Windows Server 2008 R2).

Telerik's RadWindow is a standard user control that mimicks a dialog's behaviour so styling it was not an issue. With WPF's Window though, I have a hard time changing its "border". What I mean by "border" here is both the title bar with the icon and the 3 standard buttons (Minimize, Maximize/Restore, Close) and the resize grip around the window.

How can I change the looks of these items:

  • Title bar color
  • 3 standard buttons
  • Window's real border color

With round corners if possible.

Answer

Muad'Dib picture Muad'Dib · Apr 2, 2012

Those are "non-client" areas and are controlled by Windows. Here is the MSDN docs on the subject (the pertinent info is at the top).

Basically, you set your Window's WindowStyle="None", then build your own window interface. (similar question on SO)

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