Create a new user control (Windows Phone)

You can design your own customized controls that you can reuse multiple times in a project. These controls inherit from the UserControl class and therefore do not use templates. However, you can control the appearance of your user control by designing it from scratch.

To create an empty user control

1. Open a project.

2. On the File menu, click New Item (Ctrl+N).

   

3. In the New Item dialog box, select UserControl.

4. Next to Name, type a descriptive name for your user control.

Tip

In Blend for Visual Studio 2012, a code-behind file is automatically created for all the items added using the New Item dialog except when adding a Resource Dictionary.

5. Click OK to close the dialog box and open the user control for editing.

   You can now design the look of your user control.

To draw a new instance of your user control in a document in your project

1. Save all your files (Ctrl+Shift+S).

2. Build your project (Ctrl+Shift+B) to make the user control appear in the Assets panel.

3. In the Tools panel, click Assets .

4. In the Assets panel, in the Project tab, select your user control.

   

5. Using your mouse, draw your user control on the artboard.

Tip

Use the Make Into Control command to make a control template from selected objects. You can select objects on the artboard, group them into a layout panel such as a Grid, and then click Make Into Control on the Tools menu. The Make Into Control command does not create a user control. Instead, it creates a control style that contains a template made up of the objects that you selected. To draw another control of the same kind, select your style in the Styles category of the Assets panel, and then draw on the artboard.

Next steps

• You can add more objects to your user control. For more information, see the following topics:

  • Draw a control in your project (Windows Phone)

• You can define custom states that your user control can be in, and change the appearance of your user control in each state. For more information, see Define different visual states and transition times for a user control (Windows Phone).

• You can make your user control respond to a mouse click by changing its appearance.

• You can make your user control change its appearance in a more elaborate way when it is clicked. For more information, see Modify the transition time between state changes (Windows Phone).