New to Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX? Download free 30-day trial

Skins

To make customizing the appearance of RadDropDownList as easy as possible, the control uses skins. A skin is a set of images and a CSS stylesheet that can be applied to RadDropDownList elements (items, arrows, drop-down container etc.) and defines their look and feel. To apply a skin to RadDropDownList, set its Skin property, either using the properties pane or the RadDropDownList Smart Tag.

RadDropDownList is installed with a number of built-in skins:dropdownlist skins

The Material skin is available for the Lightweight RenderMode only. If you experience visual issues with it, make sure your controls are not using the default Classic mode.

Customizing Skins

You can tweak the existing skins, or create your own. Each skin has two main elements: images and a stylesheet. When creating your own, it is a good idea to start with the stylesheet of an existing skin and alter that. To use your own skin:

  1. Add the new CSS file to your project.

  2. Drag and drop the CSS file from the Project Explorer onto your Web page.

  3. Set the EnableEmbeddedSkins property of RadDropDownList to False.

Depending on the Render Mode that is chosen for the RadDropDownList, the Skin files could be found in different locations:

Skins in Classic Render Mode

The stylesheet for a RadDropDownList skin in Classic Render Mode has the name DropDownList.[SkinName].css and can be found in the ...Skins/[SkinName] directory. The images are found in the ...Skins/[SkinName]/DropDownList directory.

For example, the stylesheet for the "Silk" skin is called DropDownList.Silk.css and is located in the ...Skins/Silk directory. The images are found in the ...Skins/Silk/DropDownList directory. The images are referenced by name from within the stylesheet.

Skins in Lightweight Render Mode

The stylesheet for a RadDropDownList skin in Lightweight Render Mode also has the name DropDownList.[SkinName].css, but it could be found in the ...Skins/[SkinName]Lite directory. For example, the stylesheet for the "Silk" skin is called DropDownList.Silk.css and is located in the ...Skins/SilkLite directory.

The Lightweight Render Mode does not use images for the RadDropDownList skins, but it uses font icons, gradients and other modern HTML features instead.

The stylesheet for RadDropDownList in Lightweight Render Mode and Silk skin is as follows:

/* RadDropDownList Silk skin in Lightweight */

/* global */

.RadDropDownList_Silk {
    color: #767676;
}

/* styling the selection area of the RadDropDownList */

.RadDropDownList_Silk .rddlInner {
    border-color: #c9c9c9;
    color: #767676;
    background-color: #e3e3e3;
    background-image: linear-gradient(#fefefe, #e3e3e3);
}

.RadDropDownList_Silk .rddlHovered {
    border-color: #0090a9;
    color: #ffffff;
    background-color: #0090a9;
    background-image: linear-gradient(#00a9c7, #0090a9);
}

.RadDropDownList_Silk .rddlFocused {
    border-color: #2292a8;
    color: #ffffff;
    background-color: #14afca;
    background-image: linear-gradient(#14afca, #14afca);
}

/* styling the drop-down of the RadDropDownList */

.rddlPopup_Silk {
    border-color: #d7d7d7;
    color: #555555;
    background-color: #ffffff;
}

    .rddlPopup_Silk .rddlHeader,
    .rddlPopup_Silk .rddlFooter {
        border-color: #d7d7d7;
    }

    .rddlPopup_Silk .rddlItemHovered, .rddlPopup_Silk .rddlItemLoading {
        color: #333333;
        background-color: #bbeaf3;
    }

    .rddlPopup_Silk .rddlItemSelected {
        color: #ffffff;
        background-color: #7bcfdc;
    }

See Also

In this article