MahApps.Metro - StatusBar

Two implicit styles, applied by Styles/Controls.xaml. A MahApps status bar is not a grey strip at the bottom of the window — it is a second title bar, in the accent colour, and it dims with the window.

A status bar in an active MetroWindow

<mah:MetroWindow>
    <DockPanel>
        <StatusBar DockPanel.Dock="Bottom">
            <StatusBarItem Content="Ready" />
            <Separator Style="{StaticResource MahApps.Styles.Separator.StatusBar}" />
            <StatusBarItem Content="Ln 42, Col 7" />
            <Separator Style="{StaticResource MahApps.Styles.Separator.StatusBar}" />
            <StatusBarItem Content="UTF-8" />
        </StatusBar>
        <!-- content -->
    </DockPanel>
</mah:MetroWindow>

Style
`MahApps.Styles.StatusBar`	the implicit one
`MahApps.Styles.StatusBarItem`	the implicit item style
`MahApps.Styles.Separator.StatusBar`	the separator between items — keyed, see below
`MahApps.Styles.StatusBar.Clean`	the Clean variant, dark text instead of light

It borrows the window title colour

The style has no Background setter. Two MultiDataTriggers supply one by reaching up to the MetroWindow:

Window	Background
active	the window's `WindowTitleBrush`
not active	its `NonActiveWindowTitleBrush`

So the bar matches the title bar, accent and all, and greys out with it when the window loses focus. That is also why Foreground is MahApps.Brushes.IdealForeground — the colour picked to read against the accent — and why the separator and the item border use it too.

Outside a MetroWindow the bar disappears. The two triggers bind through FindAncestor to a MetroWindow; with none above it they supply nothing, the background stays unset, and light text is left on the page:

The same bar with and without a MetroWindow above it

Both panels are the same markup. If you need a status bar in a plain Window, in a dialog, or anywhere else outside the window chrome, set Background and Foreground yourself:

<StatusBar Background="{DynamicResource MahApps.Brushes.Accent}"
           Foreground="{DynamicResource MahApps.Brushes.IdealForeground}" />

The separator is not applied for you

A bare separator and a styled one

A <Separator/> inside a StatusBar takes its style from StatusBar.SeparatorStyleKey, and MahApps does not define that key. The bar therefore gets WPF's default separator — a dark grey line, which on an accent-coloured strip is the wrong end of the palette. The MahApps one is IdealForeground at 0.75 opacity, which is what belongs there.

MahApps.Styles.Separator.StatusBar exists; it just has to be asked for, on every separator:

<Separator Style="{StaticResource MahApps.Styles.Separator.StatusBar}" />

One line in the bar's resources does it for all of them:

<StatusBar.Resources>
    <Style BasedOn="{StaticResource MahApps.Styles.Separator.StatusBar}" TargetType="{x:Type Separator}" />
</StatusBar.Resources>

Fonts

Like menus, the status bar takes its font family, style and weight from the Windows shell settings rather than from Fonts.xaml:

<Setter Property="FontFamily" Value="{DynamicResource {x:Static SystemFonts.StatusFontFamilyKey}}" />

Only the size is the library's, MahApps.Font.Size.StatusBar, which is 12. MahApps redefines the system colour keys in its themes but not the system font keys, so this really is the user's status-bar font.

Items

MahApps.Styles.StatusBarItem is short: Padding of 3, content left-aligned and vertically centred, a BorderBrush of IdealForeground with no thickness, and a disabled foreground of Gray2.

A StatusBarItem is a ContentControl, so anything goes in it — a ProgressBar for a background job is the usual second inhabitant of a status bar:

<StatusBarItem>
    <ProgressBar Width="120" Height="10" IsIndeterminate="True" />
</StatusBarItem>

The Clean variant

Styles/Clean/StatusBar.xaml holds MahApps.Styles.StatusBar.Clean and MahApps.Styles.Separator.Clean. Each is the ordinary style with one setter changed — the foreground and the separator colour move from IdealForeground to MahApps.Brushes.ThemeForeground, so the text is dark rather than light.

The dictionary is not merged by Controls.xaml; add Styles/Clean/StatusBar.xaml first. And note that the variant does not change the background — the window-title triggers are inherited along with everything else, so on a dark accent you would be putting dark text on it. It is meant for the Clean style set, where the title brush is light.

<StatusBar Style="{DynamicResource MahApps.Styles.StatusBar.Clean}" />