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Programming WPF, 2nd Edition
book

Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

by Chris Sells, Ian Griffiths
August 2007
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
864 pages
25h 52m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

Default Styles

Although the ability to provide a custom look for a control is useful, developers should be able to use a control without having to supply custom visuals. The control should just work when used in its most straightforward way, which means that it should supply a default set of visuals. This is normally done by providing a style that sets default property values, including a default control template.

Logically speaking, these default styles live in the system resource scope. As we saw in Chapter 12, this scope contains system-defined resources such as system colors, and default styles for built-in controls. If you write a custom control, you can add your own resources to this scope by adding a themes\generic.xaml file to your project. See Chapter 12 for more information on custom system-scope resources.

For each custom control, you should define a system-scope style with a TargetType specifying your control. This style must set the Template property with a ControlTemplate defining the default visuals for your control, such as the one shown in Example 18-26. See Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 for more information on how to define a style that supplies a template.

Example 18-26. Default visuals

<!-- themes/generic.xaml -->
<ResourceDictionary
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:local="clr-namespace:CustomControlLib">
  <Style TargetType="{x:Type local:MyCustomControl}" > <Setter Property="Template"> ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596510374Supplemental ContentErrata Page