Silverlight™ 3 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 15. Designing and Styling the User Interface

Designing and styling the user interface (UI) of your Silverlight application can be one of the most exciting and satisfying parts of the process. It is through design and styling that you give your application a personality. That personality can feel corporate and reserved (ready to get things done without any frills) or young and hip (not afraid to get a little sidetracked on the way to accomplishing the task at hand). All of the UI building blocks that we've discussed in previous chapters now come together in an infinite array of possibilities to meet your vision.

This concept is so large that this chapter could really be represented by a completely separate book that brings together software-planning concepts, user-experience concepts, and visual-design concepts. Countless books have already been written on these topics, and each caters to a different target audience, from single designers/developers to small software development teams, to large enterprise-scale application development teams. Instead of getting sidetracked by all of the many variations along the way, I'm going to present a single workflow that takes you from concept to implementation. Instead of focusing on the details of requirements gathering, because each of you probably goes about it in a little bit different way, I'll just say "after gathering requirements," then move along.

Let's start by looking at a team organization model that works well in both Silverlight ...