—- ConfigurationDialog.xaml
…
xmlns:properties=”clr-namespace:ConfigurationDialogExample.Properties”
…

…
…

…

—- GeneralSettingsView.xaml
…

…

MyNiceColor is of course one of base app settings from “Properties.Settings.Default”. The problem is that the ContentControl doesn’t pass corectly new DataContext and as I have seen every child control from that ContentControl has only data from e.g. GeneralSettingsViewModel.cs that is the current ViewModel which is binded its “Content” property.

Although if I pass DataContext during creating a UserControl object (e.g.

) everything works fine, but it’s little bit not elegant solution I think, because I must repeat this for every UserControl (SettingsView) in ConfigurationWindow.

Any suggestions will be appreciated

and what data/datatype is assigned to that SelectedItem property? I have 10 ViewModels, CustomerViewModel,ProductViewModel,… I can not make 10 SelectedItem properties in the MainViewModel. So what datatype has the return value of the SelectedItem property if I assign 10 different ViewModel instances…? You get me?

Help is really appreciated, like your blog although you could write more

how would you your sample project work if you would use buttons in a stackpanel instead of a listbox? A button has no SelectedmItem property… so how would you use the button click? event to show the appropiate usercontrol in the contentcontrol?

Karl Shifflett suggested a solution for this with the slightly modified tab control that doesn’t destroy the tabs. Tab control by Eric Burke:

http://eric.burke.name/dotnetmania/2009/04/26/22.09.28

I’ve been discussing this issue with Josh. Apparently, there is no simple workaround. Using DataTemplate-driven approach has its pros and cons… If your views are too expensive to throw them away and recreate them, you should try another approach (more “classical”).

I see that you are using a very similar approach to one described by Josh Smith in his MSDN article (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd419663.aspx). In your application (and in Josh’s sample as well) the views are rendered as templates for view models. This is an elegant approach, but not without its drawbacks.

One issue I have is that the view is recreated each time you switch between sections of your settings dialog (and each time you switch between tabs in Josh’s example). If the view is not trivial it may take some time for the runtime to render it. You will also lose your UI state (if you’ve scrolled down the list you’ll be back at row 1).

I wonder if you have any ideas on how to make the views stay alive when switching between sections of your dialog?

Thanks,

Mike

Regards
Arne
Denmark