What is the best reference material on WPF custom controls

Question

I currently do all development work in VB.NET 2008, winforms; but within 18 months will be switching to WPF (for better or worse). I have had great success using Matthew MacDonald's "Pro .NET 2.0 Windows Forms and Custom Controls in VB 2005" book. This is an excellent reference focused entirely on the development of custom controls in windows forms. ( Many of the controls that I use have to have a very specific UI look and feel, so they end up being custom. )

I'm looking for pretty much the exact same thing, except focused on WPF.

MacDonald has a new book coming out on WPF in general ,but not on custom controls.

Books are my preferred reference material, but any good web references would also be appreciated.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I have Pro WPF with C# 2008 by MacDonald and it is a surprisingly good reference on controls, templating, and styling. At over 1,000 pages it is a really meaty work; you can rest assured there is enough material on controls. There are no books dedicated entirely to WPF controls (that I know of) simply because control development in WPF is that much easier than control development in WinForms. If you have a mastery of templates and styles, you can do so much with the basic controls that there is almost no need for custom controls.