Is there any difference between WPF TextBlock and TextBox?

wpf textbox textblock
Irfan picture Irfan · Aug 13, 2013 · Viewed 68.3k times · Source

What criteria must I consider when selecting one of these two controls?

Answer

Rohit picture Rohit · Aug 13, 2013

Common to both TextBlocks and TextBoxes:

  • Can be used to display text
  • Can be set to specific Height and Width or be set to Auto so that they grow in size with the text.
  • Can set font size, font type, font styling, to wrap and to range left, right or centred.
  • Can have opacity set and have Pixel Shaders applied.

TextBlock:

  • Used for displaying text more focused typographically.
  • Can contain text set to different colors, fonts and sizes.
  • The line height can also be increased from the default setting to give more space between each line of text.
  • Text inside a TextBlock cannot be made selectable by the user.

TextBox:

  • Used for displaying text more focused for content input or when content is needed to be made selectable by the user.
  • Can only be set to one colour, one font size, one font type etc.
  • Have fixed Line Spacing.
  • Can also be set to a fixed height and width but also have scrollbars switched on to allow content to expand.

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