Default text for DropDownList - winforms

Question

For a long time I used the usual DropDown as a ComboBoxStyle. However, I have only 2 items in the ComboBox and searching manually in this case looks unreasonable. Therefore, I decided to refer to DropDownList, since the text in it is immutable.
However, along with this I ran into a problem. In the case when no element is selected (if I understand correctly, in this case the -1 element is selected) I can not display the default text, for example, an invitation to select an element from the list. The variant with ComboBox.Text ("Please, select any value") no longer works (because the text is immutable) and here I am stumped, because I do not know what to do.
Sure, I have tried to look for something in the C# branch, but did not find anything working for powershell. Here is the option I have tried and which does not works:
$MethodComboBox.Add_TextChanged($defaultLabel)
$defaultLabel =
{
if ($ComboBox.SelectedIndex -lt 0)
{
$ComboBox.Text = "Please, select any value";
}
else
{
$ComboBox.Text = $ComboBox.SelectedText;
}
}

Answer 1

You can set the DrawMode of the ComboBox to OwnerDrawFixed and then handle DrawItem event and render a custom select text when index is -1:
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
$form = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form
$combo = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox
$combo.DropDownStyle = [System.Windows.Forms.ComboBoxStyle]::DropDownList
$combo.DrawMode = [System.Windows.Forms.DrawMode]::OwnerDrawFixed
$combo.Width = 200
$combo.ItemHeight = 24
$combo.Items.Add("Male")
$combo.Items.Add("Female")
$form.Controls.Add($combo)
$combo.Add_DrawItem({param($sender,$e)
$text = "-- Select Gender --"
if ($e.Index -gt -1){
$text = $sender.GetItemText($sender.Items[$e.Index])
}
$e.DrawBackground()
[System.Windows.Forms.TextRenderer]::DrawText($e.Graphics, $text, $combo.Font, `
$e.Bounds, $e.ForeColor, [System.Windows.Forms.TextFormatFlags]::Default)
})
$form.ShowDialog() | Out-Null
$form.Dispose()