Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. Controls

A control is a user interface component that provides a particular interactive behavior. There are many familiar examples in Windows, such as text boxes, which offer text editing, and radio buttons, which let the user choose from a set of options. Controls are the building blocks of any WPF user interface.

Although controls are typically associated with a default appearance, WPF offers many ways to alter or replace a control's look. We can adjust properties to make simple alterations such as setting foreground and background colors. With controls that support the content model, we can put any mixture of graphics and text inside the control. We can even use templates to replace the whole look of the control. However, even if we replace the visuals of, say, a scroll bar, we have not changed its fundamental role as an element for performing scrolling. In WPF, it is this behavior that forms the essence of a control.

In this chapter, we will examine how to use controls to handle input, and we will explore the set of behaviors offered by the built-in controls. We will cover creation of custom controls in Chapter 18.

What Are Controls?

Whereas most popular UI frameworks offer an abstraction similar to a control, WPF takes a slightly unusual approach, in that controls are typically not directly responsible for their own appearance. Controls in WPF are all about behavior, and they defer to templates to provide their visuals. Many GUI frameworks require you to write a custom ...