Brian (and Infragistics) is having a theme give-away... As in giving away some of their WPF and Silverlight themes

Brian Lagunas - FREE Metro Light and Dark Themes for WPF and Silverlight Microsoft Controls

The quest for a good application theme never ends.  You spend hours scouring the realms of Google and Bing looking for a clean, modern, and touch friendly theme to use in your application.  That is, until now!  If you have been looking for a free Metro theme for WPF and Silverlight, then look no further.

Infragistics ships a number of great themes with their NetAdvantage for WPF and Silverlight products.  As the Product Manager for these controls, I started asking myself, “Why should we keep these great themes to ourselves?”.  If you know me, you know I am a hard core XAML developer and I am all about community.  Heck, I single handedly wrote the most popular Extended WPF toolkit in the world, and I provided it to everyone for free.  So starting today, I am excited to announce that I am going to be giving away, all of our themes for the standard WPF and Silverlight Microsoft controls.  Yes, I said GIVING AWAY, as in FREE.

There is a catch though.  We will NOT support every single Microsoft control.  Why?  Well, because we would prefer for you to use our controls instead.  For example, we will not be providing a style for the Microsoft DataGrid because we have a much better xamDataGrid control.  You get the idea.  Also,  I am not going to give them to you all at once.  I am going to release them a one at a time.  Why?  Well, I want to see what kind of response I get from the community.  If I get zero response or support from the community, then there is no need to keep releasing themes.  I don’t want to waste my time, or the developers who create these themes time.  On the other hand, if the community gives me an overwhelming show of support, then I will be releasing more themes.  Seems fair, wouldn’t you agree?

Today’s free theme is a clean, modern, touch friendly theme in the form of the Infragistics’ Metro Theme.  You will be getting both a Light and Dark version. ...

...

Silverlight

You can see the full list of supported controls in the list below.

• Accordion
• AutoCompleteBox
• BusyIndicator
• Button
• CheckBox
• ComboBox
• Expander
• GridSplitter
• Label
• ListBox
• PasswordBox
• ProgressBar
• RadioButton
• Rating
• RepeatButton
• Slider
• TabControl
• TextBox
• ToggleButton
• Tooltip

...

WPF

Next up is the WPF version of the Infragistics’ Metro Theme.  Just like the Silverlight version, we are providing you with styles for the primitive WPF controls that appear in the Visual Studio toolbox, as well as some controls in the WPF Toolkit.  Just like for the Silverlight version, we organized the themes by their respective source so that if you don’t use the WPF toolkit, there will be no need for your code to take a dependency on it..

Here is the full list of support controls:

• Accordion
• AutoCompleteBox
• Button
• CheckBox
• ComboBox
• Expander
• GridSplitter
• GroupBox
• Label
• ListBox
• PasswordBox
• ProgressBar
• RadioButton
• Rating
• RepeatButton
• Slider
• TextBox
• ToggleButton
• Tooltip

...

..."

This made me chuckle, "There is a catch though.  We will NOT support every single Microsoft control.  Why?  Well, because we would prefer for you to use our controls instead..." GOT to love that kind of clear and honest answer. Will that me everyone happy? No, it's the internet. I'm sure someone will whine... But hey, what do you want for free, your money back?

I applaud them for looking at their stuff and saying, "you know, this isn't directly revenue generating and we could do something nice for the community by giving some of our theme's away." Or they could have been thinking, "OMG the WPF app's I'm seeing are pretty darn fugly. Maybe if we gave our themes away..." Or more likely, "Brian, will you shut the heck up and stop bugging us about 'community' if we give something away? Like maybe our themes?"

Anyway, no matter what they were thinking, I'm glad they are doing it.

Finally I also like that it's a a little WPF and Silverlight love... :)