Pro Silverlight 5 in VB

Dependency Properties

Essentially, a dependency property is a property that can be set directly (for example, by your code) or by one of Silverlight's services (such as data binding, styles, or animation). The key feature of this system is the way that these different property providers are prioritized. For example, an animation will take precedence over all other services while it's running. These overlapping factors make for a very flexible system. They also give dependency properties their name—in essence, a dependency property depends on multiple property providers, each with its own level of precedence.

Most of the properties that are exposed by Silverlight elements are dependency properties. For example, the Text property of the TextBlock, ...