Styling tips for common Silverlight controls
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Microsoft Expression Blend comes with many Microsoft Silverlight controls that you can use to create a great user experience. You can access even more controls if you add a reference in your project to the Silverlight SDK or to control assemblies that you download from trusted sources.
For more information, see Import a custom control by adding a reference.
If you find a control that functionally fits your needs but doesn't look the way that you want it to, and if that control supports templates, you can modify the templates of the control to change its appearance.
To make things easier, you can focus on your design by drawing everything on the artboard first, by using drawing tools, and by importing art or other assets. When you are done, you can use the Make Into Control command to convert your objects into a template for any control.
Templates of Silverlight controls can include different visual states that you can modify by making the objects in your template appear and disappear, or change in appearance. Templates can also include specific parts that must be named a certain way for the control to work as expected. You can use the styling tips in the following topics to help you create the objects that you will convert into control templates.
In this section
See also
Concepts
Defining different visual states for a control
Styling the parts of a Silverlight control template