Prevent a readonly textbox from being grayed out in Silverlight

Question

In Silverlight, How do I make a TextBox with IsReadOnly=\"True\" not become grayed out. The gray effect looks horrible with my app and I would like to disable it, o

Answer 1

Here's an enhanced version of @Struan's answer.

I assume you want to allow Select all and Copy if you're wanting a read only textbox. You need to handle keypresses such as Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C.

Disclaimer: this is not a fully complete set of keys - you may need to add more, but this will allow for copy at least.

public class ReadOnlyTextBox : TextBox
{
    protected override void OnKeyDown(KeyEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.Key == Key.Left || e.Key == Key.Right || e.Key == Key.Up || e.Key == Key.Down)
        {
            base.OnKeyDown(e);
            return;
        }

        if ((Keyboard.Modifiers & ModifierKeys.Control) == ModifierKeys.Control ||
            (Keyboard.Modifiers & ModifierKeys.Apple) == ModifierKeys.Apple)
        {
            if (e.Key == Key.A || e.Key == Key.C)
            {
                // allow select all and copy!
                base.OnKeyDown(e);
                return;
            }
        }

        e.Handled = true;
        base.OnKeyDown(e);
    }
}

And here's a simple Style I'm using that indicates to the user that the item is selectable, but is smaller than a typical textbox.