public class RedListBox : ListBox

public RedListBox()

DrawMode = DrawMode.OwnerDrawFixed;

protected override void OnDrawItem(DrawItemEventArgs e)

if (e.Index < 0 || e.Index >= Items.Count)

return;

Color itemForeColor = e.Index == 0 ?

Color.Red : e.ForeColor;

e.Graphics.DrawString(this.Items[e.Index].ToString(), this.Font, new SolidBrush(itemForeColor), e.Bounds);

public class RedListBox : ListBox

public RedListBox()

DrawMode = DrawMode.OwnerDrawFixed;

protected override void OnDrawItem(DrawItemEventArgs e)

if (e.Index < 0 || e.Index >= Items.Count)

return;

Color itemForeColor = e.Index == 0 ?

Color.Red : e.ForeColor;

e.Graphics.DrawString(this.Items[e.Index].ToString(), this.Font, new SolidBrush(itemForeColor), e.Bounds);

Hi Eli,

A tiny tweak on your code:

I try to make it standard practise to dispose of things like brushes. Like this:

using( Brush brush = new SolidBrush(itemForeColor) ) {   e.Graphics.DrawString(this.Items[e.Index].ToString(), this.Font, brush, e.Bounds); }

You are right in general, best practive indeed, but when writing:

new Object() inside a method declartion, it is disposed right away, or, maybe I got it wrong?

Actually... not necessarily. You are right that when a local object goes out of scope that there are no more references to it. But the garbage collector may take quite some time before disposing of the object. I've explained this in some other forum more extensively, along with a sample. You might want to check it out:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=172066&SiteID=1

Calling Dispose on an object doesn't mean that the object is freed. It is a way to free unmanaged resources, which we, forms programmers, have to take good care of. Windows Forms (actually GDI+) uses GDI handles extensively, and we should try to dispose of our objects as quickly as possible. If not done manually through Dispose or the using keyword, the object will surely be disposed later when the garbage collector kicks in. But that might be too late on intensive paint operations. GDI handles are limited. I make it standard practise to apply the using keyword to any object that implements the IDisposable interface.