Insert controls and modify their behavior in Blend

Controls enable users to interact with your app. You can use them to collect information and to perform actions such as animate an object or query a data source.

In this topic:

• Add controls to the artboard

• Make controls do things

Add controls to the artboard

You can drag controls from the Tools or Asset panel onto your artboard, and then modify them in the Properties window.

These videos show you how to use some of the more common controls.

Control	Watch a short video
Menu	Add the controls
Button	Design a button
Progress bar	No video available. Suggest one.
Textblock	Add images to a textblock
Slider	Build a Slider with a ToolTip
Radio button	No video available. Suggest one
Checkbox	No video available. Suggest one
List box	No video available. Suggest one
GridSplitter	Work with a GridSplitter

If you’d like to suggest a video or know of any great videos that have helped you use controls in your pages, please share that with us. See Help us evolve our content!

Make a control out of an image, shape, or path

You can make any object into a control.

For example, imagine a picture of a television in the center of a page. You could make controls out of small images that look like television buttons. Then, users could click those buttons to change the channel.

This is possible because the buttons are now controls. With controls, you can respond to user interactions; in this case, when the user clicks a button.

To make a control, select an object. Then, on the Tools menu, click Make Control.

Make controls do things

Controls can perform actions when users interact with them. For example, they can start an animation, update a data source or play a video.

Use triggers, behaviors, and events to make controls do things.

Triggers

A trigger changes a property or performs a task in response to an event or a change in another property. For example, you can change the color of a button when users hover over it.

Watch a short video:Add a property trigger.

Behaviors

A behavior is a reusable package of code. It can do a bit more than change properties. It can perform actions such as query a data service. Blend comes with a small collection of them, but you can add more. Drag a behavior onto any object in your artboard, and then customize the behavior by setting properties.

Watch a short video:Blend tips: Intro to using behaviors Part 1.

Events

For ultimate flexibility, handle an event. You’ll have to write some code.

Watch a short video:Add a Mouse event.

Help us evolve our content!

If you’ve found a video or article that’s helped you work with controls in Blend, please share that with us. After we review the content, we might add a link to it so that others can benefit from your discovery.

If you’d like to suggest a new video, we’d also like to hear from you. If we receive similar requests from others, we’ll create one as our time and priorities permit.

No one knows your business better than you. So please tell us what resources have helped you to work with controls in your pages, and what areas have not been well explained by us, or by anyone in our community, so that we can better evolve our content to help you.

Please share your suggestions here.