I\'m currently working on having dictionaries of styles and templates that I can dynamically apply to my application. Before this \"new wanted\" dynamical behavior, I had se
Great answer by John explaining why this is happening. So the problem is that when using merged dictionaries within a merged dictionary, the inner dictionaries can't "use" each other as StaticResource.
Basic solutions:
Both of these solutions have problems. DynamicResource has a performance problem. The 2nd solution limits you on how you organize your XAML resources.
Alternative solution:
I created a small simple program (provided below in GitHub) that will run as a pre-build event and merge XAML files from a folder into one long .XAML file. Well, they need to be with a different extension (.txaml), otherwise they will be compiled.
This allows to structure resources folders and files however you want, without WPF’s limitations. StaticResource and the designer will work always.
The code in GitHub contains a simple solution that contains the merging program. It merges 2 folders into 2 files. One for App.xaml resources and the other for Generic.xaml resources. The .xaml files in a "Controls" project (There's also "Main" project).
Blog post explaining this