WPF Controls for Line of Business and Data Visualization

What is ClearStyle?

ClearStyle, a feature in ComponentOne Silverlight and WPF controls, is a new, quick and easy approach to styling controls. It allows developers to customize the style for a control without having to hassle with XAML templates and style resources. With ComponentOne ClearStyle™ technology you can fully style controls right on the Visual Studio 2010 design surface without needing Expression Blend or a professional designer.

Style Without Expression Blend

Currently, to add a theme to all standard Silverlight and WPF controls you must modify the control's template, and then manage many style resources in your project. In Visual Studio alone this process is nearly impossible, which is why Microsoft introduced Expression Blend. Having to jump between two environments can be a bit challenging, especially for developers not familiar with Blend. Hiring a designer is an option, but that can introduce complications when your designer and developers are sharing XAML files.

Simple, Intuitive Styling

ClearStyle brings the styling capabilities to you in Visual Studio 2010 in the most intuitive manner possible. Most situations involve simple styling changes to the controls in your app so this process should be easy. For example, creating a full template to simply change a grid's row color isn't efficient.

Detailed Changes are Easy

Each key part of the control is surfaced as a Brush property. This leads to a unique set of Brushes for each control. For example, a Gauge has a PointerFill and a PointerStroke property, whereas a DataGrid has SelectedBrush and MouseOverBrush for rows. These brushes can be assigned simple solid colors or even multi-point gradients and textures.

Option for Full Redesign is Still There

ClearStyle is intended to be a solution for quick and easy style modification. You're still free to fully customize the control templates to get the exact style needed; ClearStyle doesn't interfere with these less common situations.