In Silverlight why are some properties prefixed with x e.g x:name and some are not?

Question

In Silverlight (and I guess WPF) why are the properties x:name x:fieldmodifier x:uid the only ones with the prefix x.

I understand the x prefix is used to refer to the XML namespace but there are a number of other properties that do not use a prefix such as width. Identifying a control is such a common task it seems odd to require a prefix?

Answer 1

Update: I’m sorry because I don't understand well the question (see the comment).

In silverlight and wpf the .net namespaces are associated to xml namespaces. The more common .net namespaces are a associated to the xml namespace "http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation". Then in the xaml root element there is this namespace definition:

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

These means that the .net namespaces associated to "http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" doesn't need prefix.

Here is a good explanation of xaml and namespaces.

Answer 2

One of:

• Personal preference.
• The implementation (class) of that project is in the same assembly as the XAML file.
• Some fool decided to create his own name property.

Answer 3

I think that the key point here is the difference between xaml and wpf / SL.

Xaml is really a object initialization language and is totally independent from wpf / SL. For example you can also use xaml to define workflows in WF. I think these is the reason to have the “pure” Xaml namespace’s differentiated from presentation namespaces.