.net - Default ContextMenu Style - WPF

Question

I am trying to modify the default style of the ContextMenu in WPF.

Normally you can creat a copy of the default in Expression Blend using the Edit Control Parts (Template) > Edit a Copy menu option. However I can't work out how to do this with a ContextMenu. Any idea how I can get the default style to modify?

I am trying to disable the left side of the context menu where the icons are normally shown.

Thanks!

Update: Maybe I wasn't clear about removing the icons. For example, if you have a context menu with no icons then the whole left side of the menu is wasted space. I would like to modify the default style of the context menu background to remove this. Simply I don't know how to access this default style.

Answer 1

For templates and styles that are not accessible through the Expression Interface (such as the ContextMenu template) you can use the following code to extract the template:

Dim sb As System.Text.StringBuilder = New System.Text.StringBuilder
Using Writer As TextWriter = New StringWriter(sb)
    System.Windows.Markup.XamlWriter.Save(ContextMenu.Template, Writer)
End Using
Debug.Write(sb.ToString)

Or in C#

var str = new StringBuilder();
using (var writer = new StringWriter(str))
    XamlWriter.Save(ContextMenu.Template, writer);
Debug.Write(str);