ControlTemplates, Styles, and Custom UserControls

Abstract

What this chapter covers:

• Understanding ControlTemplates

• How Styles work with ControlTemplates

• Creating a Button ControlTemplate

• Creating Styles and using them to overwrite WPF controls

• Using Styles to mandate how controls display their content

• Using ResourceDictionaries

• Applying resources to WPF controls

• Using Styles and ControlTemplates to create your own custom WPF UserControls

• How to create and use custom UserControls

A very important concept in object-oriented programming is one that says you can create something once and then reuse it over and over again. Of course, this means you can reuse a resource in one application, but in WPF you can take this further and reuse a resource over and over again in other applications. ControlTemplates and UserControls allow you to do just that. I have been working with WPF now for well over a year, and in that time I have been able to create my own libraries of resources that I am now able to reuse in new applications that I create. This allows me to develop new applications faster because I don’t have to re-create new resources, but rather add a reference to them in my new applications and then simply make use of them. In this chapter, you are going to create a Style for a WPF Button control that will contain a ControlTemplate, and then change that ControlTemplate to have the Button show an Image control. You are then going to create a ResourceDictionary and move the Button Style to it. Finally, you are going to take everything you have learned and create a custom UserControl.