When we discussed styles in Chapter 3, Enhancing the User Interface, we realized that styles can be placed in various scopes throughout our application. Most of the time we will place styles at the global level, which means our App.xaml file may get messy quite fast. A commonly used strategy to enhance the App.xaml file is to place styles and resources that are related to one another into what's called a resource dictionary. When an application uses multiple resource dictionaries, these dictionaries will be merged at compile time.
A nice feature of resource dictionaries is their ability to be used as hosts to sample data at design time.
When creating an application that uses a custom item template, it's easier to design the template when you can view the data you are designing it for. When you use the binding engine to bind data in Visual Studio, you are usually left in the cold. You can set the properties...