#9 – Styles
July 21, 2010 4 Comments
In WPF, a style is a set of property values that you can reuse when setting similar properties for a number of controls. You can store a style as a resource and then apply that resource to multiple controls by setting their Style property.
Let’s say that you have a set of properties that you want to apply to several buttons in your UI. You can first define a new style as a static resource:
<Window.Resources>
<Style x:Key="StdButton" TargetType="Button">
<Setter Property="Width" Value="100"/>
<Setter Property="Control.Background" Value="AliceBlue"/>
<Setter Property="Control.FontFamily" Value="Calibri" />
<Setter Property="Control.FontWeight" Value="Bold" />
</Style>
</Window.Resources>
Then you can apply this style using the Style property for individual Button controls:
<Button Content="I'm stylish" Style="{StaticResource StdButton}" />
<Button Content="Me Too" Style="{StaticResource StdButton}" />
<Button Content="Not me"/>
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gives an error
MC4003: Cannot resolve the Style Property ‘Width’. Verify that the owning type is the Style’s TargetType, or use Class.Property syntax to specify the Property.
It should be:
Thanks Ivan. I’ve updated the example to include a TargetType property on the tag. You could have also used a property of “Button.Width” in the Setter.
Interestingly, though the compiler issues an error about the Width property being ambiguous, the WPF designer correctly reads it and applies the style.