Usage of same xaml file for silverlight and wpf application

Question

I want to use same xaml files for silverlight and wpf version of applications.

Only difference that i need is in styling. I have used styles in xaml. But for silverlight i dont want to use any styling in my xaml files, as styling is defined a application level in the form of themes.

Is there any other way to use same xaml file for silvelight and wpf versions? Otherwise I am forced to maintain separate xaml files.

Answer 1

you can reuse quite a bit of xaml for both, I have projects where I'm linking all the same files, xaml and code behind and it works decently.

A couple of things to be weary of is certain things don't always match up well, for example wpf has a template selector for a itemscontrol and silverlight doesn't.

Using SizeToContent tends to produce different behaviours in the two, I recommend avoiding it, I don't think it buys you anything.

I recommend having a seperate 'base' resource where you can keep your difference in the two files. things like event triggers for example aren't nearly as filled out in silverlight. you would have a base class for each version and they would abstract their differences, you could then mark the keys the same and use them as a static resource in your linked files.

Another big gotcha is you want to watch out for the order events happen for uielements, loaded,layout and apply template events get applied in different orders so if you were to make a templated control you have to be careful there, its not a deal breaker you can work around it, just be aware.

other things to be aware of -silverlight commands take a little more effort, you have to implement ICommand, this isn't always the case in wpf, I use my implementation to help with sharing the code though. -wpf is the superset, it has a lot of functions that silverlight doesn't have, Usually they are convienient ways of doing things, you just want to avoid those. Good Examples would be Preview events, not there for silverlight but you can usually find an event to match the behaviour.