From 0 to Stylin’ in 60 mins. Adding style to silver light 4 apps

From 0 to Stylin in 60 mins. Adding style to silver light 4 apps - Evan Hutnick
Evan.hutnick@telerik.com
@EvanHutnik
http://blogs.telerik.com/evanhutnik

Understanding Styling
Resources are reusable style ,data templates, control templates, colors, brushes ect.  These are defined control.resources, user control.resources, app.xaml, or resource dictionaries(in worst to best place order).  Used BasedOn to inherit from other styles, normally a good idea to keep things similar.  Implicit styles come in to play when no styles are assigned to object

Why expresion blend
Resource Window lets you see colors and resources that are available in your solution in 1 central place.
The object and timeline window is  used to create and play storyboards (for animation typically) with no code interaction. 

Putting Blend to Work
He suggests using the search window to find the properties you are looking for.  Sometimes Blend is buggy tho, and you wont be able tio run the app from blend.  Sometimes the best option is to run in VS.  In apps.xaml can add resources under <resources dictionary> section.   Just a warning, BasedOn  does not show up in search window, will have to find in xaml.  Styles in app.xaml override same named styles in resource dictionaries. 

Wrap Up
Styling makes large apps consistency easier through reuse. Expression blend makes designing storyboards, modifying styles, and extracting templated much easier.