Windows® Presentation Foundation Unleashed

Chapter 10. Styles, Templates, Skins, and Themes

In This Chapter

• Styles
• Templates
• Skins
• Themes

Arguably the most celebrated feature in WPF is the ability to give any user interface element a radically different look without having to give up all of the built-in functionality that it provides. HTML lacks this power, which is the reason most websites use images to represent buttons rather than “real buttons.” Of course, it’s pretty easy to simulate a button’s behavior with an image in HTML, but what if you want to give a completely different look to a SELECT element (HTML’s version of ComboBox)? It’s a lot of work if you want to do more than change simple properties (such as its foreground and background colors).

This chapter explains the four ...