I have the display of my tabs just about right, the last thing I need to change is the the color of the background behind the tab headers. I've tried lookiing through the xamTabControl properties and looking through feature browser, but can't seem to isolate how to change the color for that area. It seems like it should be a simple property on the xamTabControl.
Most controls in WPF expose only a few basic look related properties (e.g. Background, BorderBrush, BorderThickness). For things outside of this you normally need to retemplate the element. For our controls we try to expose ResourceKeys for brushes we use where possible. In this case some of the themes (e.g. Office2k7(Blue|Black|Silver)) do use a resourcekey for that area so depending on what theme you are using you may just be able to put a SolidColorBrush into the tabcontrol's Resources with a key of "{x:Static igWindows:PrimitivesBrushKeys.TabControlTabStripCenterFillKey}". For other themes you would need to retemplate the control and set a background on the PART_HeaderArea. One other option is to set the ItemsPanel and set the Background of that element. This would control the area containin the tab items but not the area containing the pre/post tabitemcontent e.g.
Is there a sample of re-templating the tab control I can look at?
The default xaml is shipped with the product in the DefaultStyles directory so you can use that as the basis for any custom template you create. I believe there is also a custom template example in the samples - specifically in the xamFeaturesBrowser under xamTabControl->Themes and Custom Styles->Customizing the xamTabControl
I just took a look at this sample and as usual it seem straightforward. The issue however, is that lots of times, this one included, the customizations are being applied directly in that local file. So if I want ALL my tab controls to render like that, I have to copy and paste that into all my files. If I try moving those "resources" into a theme file, it doesn't work.
It would be really nice to see an example of doing something like this, but from within a theme pack. Then I could finally start styling my controls and getting my app to look the way I want,without having to put any styling in the actual forms themselves.