What’s New In SL3 – Based-on Styles
In Silverlight 3 it is now possible to build a new style based on an existing style, thus reducing duplication of code and creating easier to manage resources (see also Merged Resource Dictionaries).
Thus you could create a style for your buttons that looks like this:
1: <Style x:Key="StandardButton"
2: TargetType="Button">
3: <Setter Property="Width"
4: Value="100" />
5: <Setter Property="Height"
6: Value="35" />
7: <Setter Property="HorizontalAlignment"
8: Value="Left" />
9: <Setter Property="VerticalAlignment"
10: Value="Bottom" />
11: </Style>
You may then create any number of buttons in Xaml using that style,
1: <Button x:Name="Button1"
2: Content="Standard"
3: Grid.Row="0"
4: Grid.Column="1"
5: Style="{StaticResource StandardButton}" />
The new capability of creating a style BASED ON the first allows you to add just those characteristics that you would change, here are two such modifications, the second building on the first,
1: <!-- Big Button -->
2: <Style x:Key="BigButton"
3: BasedOn="{StaticResource StandardButton}" 4: TargetType="Button">
5: <Setter Property="Width"
6: Value="150" />
7: <Setter Property="Height"
8: Value="50" />
9: </Style>
10:
11: <!--BigFont Button-->
12: <Style x:Key="BigFontButton"
13: TargetType="Button"
14: BasedOn="{StaticResource BigButton}"> 15: <Setter Property="FontFamily"
16: Value="Georgia" />
17: <Setter Property="FontSize"
18: Value="24" />
19: </Style>
In this case, the first style, BigButton, adds a new width and height to the standard button, and the second style, BigFontButton, is based on BigButton and adds just a change in font family and font size. You use the third style just as you would the first, without any need to reference the “ancestor” styles,
1: <Button x:Name="Button3"
2: Content="Big Font"
3: Grid.Row="2"
4: Grid.Column="1"
5: Style="{StaticResource BigFontButton}" />
The result is two buttons, one utilizing the original style, the other the twice modified style,
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