WPF Templates Differences

Question

Can anyone list the difference between these templates during we create a new WPF project... Templates WPF Application WPF Browser Application WPF Custom Control Library WPF User Control Library

Mamta M · Answer

Use of each project template is briefly listed below: WPF Application: Used to create traditional desktop WPF applications. WPF Browser Application: Used to create XBAP or WPF browser based applications. WPF Custom Control Library: Used to create a custom control library that can be referenced in another application and the custom control can be hosted on the host application. Custom controls are a kind of user-defined controls. WPF User Control Library: Used to create a user control library that can be referenced in another application and the user control can be hosted on the host application. User controls are also a kind of user-defined controls. Difference between above two types of user-defined controls is explained here : http://wangmo.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/user-controls-vs-custom-controls/

Muralidharan Deenathayalan · Answer

WPF Windows Presentation Foundation  is a framework for programming graphical user interfaces in Windows using .NET languages. A WPF application is any application programmed using WPF. A  WPF browser  (not a real programming term) I imagine refers to a web browser written using WPF for its UI. UserControls are meant to compose multiple WPF controls together in order to make a set of functionality built out of other controls. This is often used to compose a portion of a window or screen in order to organize your development by allowing you to group multiple pieces of functionality into one control. For example if you wanted to make a control for editing a User which provided text boxes for first and last name age etc. a single UserControl could be dropped onto a Window and bound to a User instance to edit this. (In this case you're using standard controls such as TextBox to compose a control for a more complex purpose.) A CustomControl  however is meant to be a new single control. This would typically be a replacement for a built-in control (which could not be redone via templating). I've found that the need for CustomControls is actually fairly rare in WPF since the WPF templating options and attached properties allow you to do nearly anything with standard controls once you learn them fully. Hope this helps you.