A viewmodel's role beyond databinding?

I'm a bit confused as to what a viewmodel's role is beyond databinding. I have a menu built in silverlight. The menu has 开发者_StackOverflow社区x number of menu items which is determined at runtime. One of the features I would like to add to this is that each menuitem has a different text colour when hovered over.

Is it the role of the view to have a colour selector method or should the view handle this in it's code behind?

---

Normally I would keep the coloring/styling in XAML if possible - My view of the ViewModel is that it is responsible for providing all the data (ie. not graphical stuff) from the Model in a manner the View can consume.

If it was complex logic that determined the color and it was to be reused - I might be tempted to put it in the ViewModel tho.

---

The view model is used by the data binding process as a "safe" way to allow you to sort/filter/group the records as seen by a specific control without (necessarily) making changes to the actual bound data set (that is, unless/until you tell it to). (FMI read Bea's article here.)

I agree with Goblin here, in that the presentation aspects like color might be best kept separate in the XAML, for example in the DataTemplate used by that control.