Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition

Custom-Drawn Elements

In the previous section, you began to explore the inner workings of WPF elements—namely, the MeasureOverride() and ArrangeOverride() methods that allow every element to plug into WPF's layout system. In this section, you'll delve a bit deeper and consider how elements render themselves.

Most WPF elements use composition to create their visual appearance. In other words, a typical element builds itself out of other, more fundamental elements. You've seen this pattern at work throughout this chapter. For example, you define the composite elements of a user control using markup that's processed in the same way as the XAML in a custom window. You define the visual tree for a custom control using a control template. And when ...