WPF: Am I supposed to be a designer?

Question

Hello,

I like to develop many tiny WPF applications. Usually I use the WPF Futures' themes, but they're far from perfect (by example, may of them doesn't implement styles for the tabs). Each time I have to spend a lot of time on the the colors, gradients, tiny details (being inspired by others WPF apps)... in order to make the general appearance, at least, consistent. Why this has to be such an hassle for every tiny application I make? It would have been great to have a XP/Vista/Seven "by default" theme brought with WPF.

I would like to know what you usually do when you make this kind of applications. I don't want to know about commercial applications, I will not spend money on a designer or on a 99$ theme (neither I will use the free Reuxables themes, doesn't look great at all). A website with many themes shared would be perfect though :)

Answer 1

Can you just say "This will look like a Windows Forms Application."

<Window Background ="{Binding Source={x:Static SystemColors.ControlBrush}}>

Problem solved. :-)

Answer 2

You can just ignore themes and you will get the look and feel of whatever version of Windows you are running on (the same as WinForms, except for the window's background color).

Or you can write your own theme/use a free theme/buy a theme, in this case you have to either design everything yourself or fix all the problems with the theme you're using - and if you have 3rd-party themed WinForms controls you are in exactly the same mess.

So, if you want your app to look good you need a designer (either you or someone else) no matter if you use WinForms, WPF or Java.

At least with WPF it's relatively easy to write the themes.

Answer 3

Check out the WPF Themes project on Codeplex. Most of the themes are pretty complete so you shouldn't have any problems and if you do it's open source so you can add the missing styles and not have to worry about doing it again.