Difference between styles and control templates

Question

I'd like to know what the differences between an Style (for a control) and a control template are. Best regards,

Gonzalo

Answer 1

A style controls the individual properties of a control. For instance, a button style can say, "For every button, use this background." A style is changing a single property on a control.

A control template is actually handling how the control displays its bound data. Instead of saying, "I want to override a control's properties," you are assembling together other smaller controls into a single control that can present different views of the bound data.

Previously in WinForms, if you wanted to write a custom list box (say that had an icon next to each item), you had to inherit from the ListView control and override the painting methods. This involved a ton of experimentation - huge pain. With WPF templates, you can use XAML to construct smaller controls together and bind them to different properties of the parent control. You are actually defining the Visual Tree for the control.

See this article for an in-depth explanation by Charles Petzold.