Formatting a ListItem Control

Nathan Sokalski · Oct 10, 2005

I want to change the background color, font attributes, etc. of the choices
in my DropDownLists. When writing them using HTML SELECT and OPTION tags, I
can do something like the following:

<option
style="font-weight:bold;color:green;background-color

urple;">Displayed
Text</option>

but the ListItem Control does not have a Style property, which prevents me
from doing anything other than specifying the Text, Value, and Selected
properties. Is there any way to format the ListItem Control, such as some
kind of workaround (I know I could write my own Control that inherits
ListItem, but I have very little experience doing this, so I might do it in
the future, but for the moment I am looking for a workaround)?

Graham · Oct 10, 2005

Afternoon Nathan
Im not sure how frowned upon the practise of stylising individual options
within a select is but:
In the html code you could just add the style tag to the listitem
declaration (sure, its not there in intellisense but it should still show up
in ur broswer):
<asp:dropdownlist id="foo" runat="server">
<asp:listitem value="bar" style="background: #000000;">Bar it
up</asp:listitem>
</asp:dropdownlist>

or if you are using code to add items to the dropdownlist, then you could
add attributes to each listitem:
ListItem li = new ListItem();
li.Value = "bar";
li.Text = "Bar it up";
li.Attributes.Add("style", "background: #000000;");
Foo.Items.Add(li);

Also be aware that some css styles will not work when applied to
dropdownlists and possibly their child listitems.

Graham

neilmcguigan · Oct 10, 2005

you can do it using a style sheet like this:

<html>
<head>

<style>
..DropDownList option
{
font-weight:bold;color:green;background-color

urple;
}
</style>

</head>
<body>
<form runat="server">
<asp

ropDownList id="DropDownList1" runat="server"
CssClass="DropDownList"></asp

ropDownList>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Scott Mitchell [MVP] · Oct 11, 2005

Nathan said:
I want to change the background color, font attributes, etc. of the choices
in my DropDownLists. When writing them using HTML SELECT and OPTION tags, I
can do something like the following:

<option
style="font-weight:bold;color:green;background-colorurple;">Displayed
Text</option>

but the ListItem Control does not have a Style property, which prevents me
from doing anything other than specifying the Text, Value, and Selected
properties. Is there any way to format the ListItem Control, such as some
kind of workaround (I know I could write my own Control that inherits
ListItem, but I have very little experience doing this, so I might do it in
the future, but for the moment I am looking for a workaround)?

Nathan, this is a known problem with ListControls in ASP.NET 1.x. Check
oiut this article for a discussion as to WHY and a potential workaround.
(Although if all you want to do is styling, then the solution posted
by (e-mail address removed) is probably easier than my workaround at the
article below...)

ListControl Items and Attributes
http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/091405-1.aspx

Happy Programming!

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Formatting a ListItem Control

Nathan Sokalski

Graham

neilmcguigan

Scott Mitchell [MVP]

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