Question

as an ASP.Net developer, I am familiar with Master Pages as template for web pages. Is there any mechanism in silverlight which is equivalent with Master Pages in ASP.Net?

Because I don’t want to repeat myself creating similar control like:

ControlA

<UserControl>
  <Grid>
    <Button Click="ClickMe" />
    <Button Click="CancelMe" />
    <TextBlock />
    <StackPanel>
      <!-- content start here -->
      <Rectangle />
      <!-- content end here -->
    </StackPanel>
  <Grid>
</UserControl>

ControlB

<UserControl>
  <Grid>
    <Button Click="ClickMe" />
    <Button Click="CancelMe" />
    <TextBlock />
    <StackPanel>
      <!-- content start here -->
      <Canvas />
      <!-- content end here -->
    </StackPanel>
  <Grid>
</UserControl>

Answer 1

You can use ItemsControl for this specific kind of templating. An ItemsControl is a type of Control that can contain multiple items, such as strings, objects, or other elements. Transform your XAML as illustrated below. Remember to derive your class from ItemsControl instead of UserControl in your code-behind.

<ItemsControl>
  <ItemsControl.Template>
    <ControlTemplate TargetType="ItemsControl">
      <Grid>
        <Button Click="ClickMe"/>
        <Button Click="CancelMe"/>
        <TextBlock/>
        <ItemsPresenter/>
      </StackPanel>
    </ControlTemplate>
  </ItemsControl.Template>
  <ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
    <ItemsPanelTemplate>
      <StackPanel/>
    </ItemsPanelTemplate>
  </ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
</ItemsControl>

Assume that your new class is named MasterPageControl. You can use the control like this:

<local:MasterPageControl>
  ...
  <Rectangle/>
  <Canvas/>
  ...
</local:MasterPageControl>