#1,177 – UIElement vs. FrameworkElement vs. Control

If you want to implement a custom element in WPF, either to display something in a user interface or to get input from a user, you’ll typically derive your custom element from one of the following classes: UIElement, FrameworkElement, or Control.

The inheritance chain for these three classes is:

When creating a custom control, you’ll want to choose as a base class whichever one of these classes has only the features that you want.  The core functionality for these three classes is:

• UIElement  (Layout + Input + Focus + Events)
  • Layout behavior (parent/child relationship, measure/arrange passes)
  • Responding to user input (input events, command bindings)
  • Managing focus
  • Raising and responding to routed events
• FrameworkElement adds
  • Alignment-related and Margin properties
  • Animation support
  • Data binding
  • Data templates
  • Styles
  • Defaults Focusable to false
• Control adds
  • Control templates
  • Background, Foreground
  • Font-related properties
  • Border-related properties
  • Defaults Focusable to true