<< Countdown to Silverlight 3 #2: Setting styles | Countdown to Silverlight 3 #4: Element binding >>

Countdown to Silverlight 3 #3: Merged resource dictionaries

by Andrej Tozon 28. June 2009 07:57

Coming from the WPF world, finding out that Silverlight lacked the feature of distributing application resources among separate files was one of those kick in a head moments. Well, not anymore. Silverlight 3, like its big brother WPF, now supports partitioning resources through merged dictionaries.

Merged resource dictionaries can be included as external files (build action = Content), as included resources (build action = Resource), or as referenced assembly resources (e.g. theming).

<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <ResourceDictionary Source="Themes/Theme1.xaml" />
            <ResourceDictionary Source="Themes/Theme2.xaml" />
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

Merged resource dictionaries come in useful when:

providing different themes for the application (like in the sample below)
providing a new style/template for existing control
providing a style/template for a custom control

Run the sample online

Source code below:

9ad539b8-041c-4603-a30b-c9b0f45aedfa|0|.0

Tags:

Silverlight | Development

WPF vs. Silverlight: a subset or what?For a WPF developer, crossing over to Silverlight development can be a pretty mindboggling adventure...Countdown to Silverlight 3 #7: NavigationAnother powerful Silverlight 3 feature is navigation. The concept is very simple: provide a space on...Add version 4 components to your Silverlight 3 application with MEFNote: this post and accompanying source code was updated to reflect the latest MEF build on Codeplex...

Comments

7/4/2009 6:39:15 AM #

Could you please elaborate on : "Merged resource dictionaries come in useful when... providing a new style/template for existing control"?

Thank you

maxima | Reply

7/4/2009 8:58:13 AM #

maxima,
similarly to my last point, I like to have a separate resource file for each control I restyle (or just retemplate) to keep them separate for faster access.
When changing the look of a let's say, ListBox, I usually start out from it's default style/template, make the changes I need, then put the new style in a separate resource file and include it where needed (usually in app.xaml).
Hope that answers your question.

Andrej | Reply

7/19/2009 4:18:50 AM #

You could also use singleton that implements inotifypropertychanged and use converter to change the styles rather than walking the visual tree.
eg: cid-289eaf995528b9fd.skydrive.live.com/.../MDic.zip

slyi | Reply

7/19/2009 7:50:09 AM #

Yes that answered the question.

Slyi - thanks for the code. this idea was demonstraded on the MS show recently.

I currently use custom upgraded Toolkit Theming to achieve the same...

maxima | Reply

Add comment