Binding to a dependency property of a user control WPF/XAML

Question

My app looks like this:

---

SectionHeader

SectionHeader

Content

SectionHeader

Conte

Answer 1

Having tried to repro this from your description and coming across a similar problem I found that the only way I could make it work is to not set the DataContext of the UserControl, and instead use ElementBinding:

The implementation of this UC is trivially simple:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using System.Collections;

namespace WpfApplication2
{
    /// 

    /// Interaction logic for UserControl1.xaml
    /// 
    public partial class UserControl1 : UserControl
    {
        public IEnumerable UCApps
        {
            get { return (IEnumerable)GetValue(UCAppsProperty); }
            set { SetValue(UCAppsProperty, value); }
        }

        // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for Apps.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty UCAppsProperty =
            DependencyProperty.Register("UCApps", typeof(IEnumerable), typeof(UserControl1), new UIPropertyMetadata(null));

        public UserControl1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();            
        }
    }
}

as is the XAML that calls it:

(I changed the name of Apps in your Usercontrol to UCApps so I could see what was going on - too many properties with the same name got confusing!)