Question

Is it possible to define some settings for the wpf designer?
I’d like to offer the user 2 display modes: “Draw Everything with Borders” and “Runtime View”.
My Custom Components should then be able to check the settings and draw themselfes accordingly.

Answer 1

I have a suggestion, why don’t you just add a DependencyProperty your Custom Component that will be “DisplayMode” and depending of that the developer put in the property (from Xaml or C#) that the Custom Component will render the way you want?

    public static readonly DependencyProperty DisplayModeProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
          "DisplayMode", typeof(int), typeof(DisplayModeProperty), new PropertyMetadata(1, OnModeChanged));

    public bool DisplayMode
    {
        private get { return (bool)GetValue(DisplayModeProperty); }
        set { SetValue(DisplayModeProperty, value); }
    }
    private static void OnModeChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        ((MyCustomComponent)d).OnModeChanged(e);
    }
    private void OnModeChanged(DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        int mode = Convert.ToInt32(e.NewValue);
        if(mode == 1)
        {
        //... Render for the Mode 1
        }
        else
        {
        //... Render for the Mode 2
        }

    }

In the Xaml :

 <cust:MyCustomCompoenent DisplayMode="1"/>