One of the navigation mechanisms used in Windows 8 and Windows Phone is a Tile. A tile is a large rectangle that can have words and pictures that a user can click on. You can build your own version of a Tile in your WPF or Silverlight applications using a User Control. With just a little bit of XAML and a little bit of code-behind you can create a navigation system.)
In Figure 1 you can see examples of the standard WPF Button controls. You can add a drop shadow and you can change the color, but you can't change much else without creating a whole new control template. For example, you are unable to modify the BorderBrush or the BorderThickness properties of the Button control. Additionally you might want to use some other animation than the default, which again requires you to change the control template. Sometimes all you want to do is to just have some simple buttons where you can modify the border brush and the thickness and have different color options via styles. I have found that instead of working with the whole control template thing, just creating a User Control is sometimes much easier.)