Varying ListViews item background color

Question

How can I make it so that a ListViews control's background color for items varies from item to item like in WinAmp, along with changing the column header colors?

If you look closely you can see the first item is a dark gray and the second is black and so on.

Answer 1

You can set the ListViewItem.BackColor property, however this has to be done manually for each alternating line. Alternatively you could use a DataGridView which has an AlternateRowStyle property that would do this automatically - albeit you'll need to databind your rows in a collection of sorts which is a whole other topic.

For the simple case:

foreach (ListViewItem item in listView1.Items)
{
    item.BackColor = item.Index % 2 == 0 ? Color.Red : Color.Black;
}

Answer 2

Handle the DrawItem event on the listbox and set the DrawMode to OwnerDrawVariable. The DrawItemEventArgs provides a BackColor property that can be set based on the index (also in the arg).