WPF Programmer's Reference: Windows Presentation Foundation with C# 2010 and .NET 4

Chapter 5. Content Controls

WPF provides a nice assortment of controls that let the user view, modify, and otherwise interact with a program's data. This chapter describes one group of those controls: content controls.

Content controls are primarily intended to hold content that the user should see. They display something that the user should view but generally won't modify.

In contrast, Chapter 6 describes layout controls that arrange the controls that they contain, and Chapter 7 describes user interaction controls that let the user interact with the application.

CONTROL CATEGORIES

Many controls fall into multiple categories. For example, a TextBox can display output, but the user can also enter values in it. Similarly, a ListBox can display items and even highlight a particular item, but the user can also select items in the list.

In this chapter and the next two, if a control usually contains or arranges other controls (e.g., a StackPanel or TabControl), then it's a layout control and is described in Chapter 6. If the control lets the user enter data, adjust something, select an item, or otherwise manipulate the program, then it's a user interaction control and is described in Chapter 6.

(I thought long and hard about the ListView and TreeView because they arrange their contents in very specific ways such as grid-like and hierarchical displays. When you use them in their simplest forms, however, they display only text and the controls they contain are mostly hidden, so I finally decided ...