All Silverlight for WP7 controls

published on: 12/8/2010 | Views: N/A | Tags: UI

by WindowsPhoneGeek

In this article I will talk about all currently available Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 controls provided by Microsoft.

 

Base controls

In this section I will cover all basic controls (Note:each control is linked to its MSDN documentation page).The following Silverlight controls are supported in Windows Phone and are included in the System.Windows.Controls Namespace in the .NET Class Library for Silverlight.

• Border
• Button
• Canvas
• CheckBox
• ContentControl
• ContentPresenter
• Control
• Grid
• HyperlinkButton
• Image
• InkPresenter
• ItemsControl
• ItemsPresenter
• ListBox
• MediaElement
• MultiScaleImage
• Panel
• PasswordBox
• ProgressBar
• RadioButton
• ScrollViewer
• Slider
• StackPanel
• TextBlock
• TextBox
• UserControl
• VirtualizingPanel
• VirtualizingStackPanel

 

Note:The ComboBox, ScrollBar, and ToolTip are hidden from the toolbox, but they can still be used in your application. The ComboBox is not themed to the Windows Phone design and you must modify it accordingly to maintain UI consistency. The ScrollBar and ToolTip are not suitable controls to use in a touch-based system.

The following controls are supported in Windows Phone and are included in the Microsoft.Phone.Controls namespace. They will be discussed further in the following topics:

• PhoneApplicationFrame Control for Windows Phone

• PhoneApplicationPage Control for Windows Phone

Bing Maps Silverlight Control for Windows Phone

The Bing Maps Silverlight Control for Windows Phone allows developers to use BingMaps within their applications. The map control for Windows Phone has the following namespaces:

• Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps,
• Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.AutomationPeers
• Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Core
• Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Design
• Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Overlays
• Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Platform

An important step in preparing to use the map control is to sign into the Bing Maps Account Center to obtain a Bing Maps Key.

You can check the API reference here and visit this post for reference: "Using the Silverlight Map Control on Windows Phone 7"

Panorama Control for Windows Phone

You can take a look at: "WP7 Navigation in depth | Navigation controls" article for reference.

You can add Panorama control to your project using Visual Studio in various ways:

• You can use a custom template named Windows Phone Panorama Application when creating a new project. This template will come pre-populated with content and you can modify the template accordingly.
• The Panorama control can also be added to the Toolbox in Visual Studio and dropped into your project.
• You can add a Windows Phone Panorama Page to a pre-existing project to create a panoramic experience.

 

Pivot Control for Windows Phone

You can take a look at: "WP7 Navigation in depth | Navigation controls" article for reference.

There are multiple ways in Visual Studio to create a pivot experience in Windows Phone.

• You can use a custom template named Windows Phone Pivot Application when creating a new project. This template will come pre-populated with content and you may modify the template accordingly.
• The Pivot control can be added to the Toolbox in Visual Studio and can be easily dropped into your project.
• You can add a Windows Phone Pivot Page to a pre-existing project to create a pivot experience. The How to: Create a Pivot Application for Windows Phone topic provides detailed instructions about how to create an application using this method.

WebBrowser Control for Windows Phone

The WebBrowser control can be embedded into an application and used in order to:

• Displaying Web content from the network. You can build an application that is composed solely of an embedded Web Browser control that points to your Web site, with custom branding around the outside of the control.
• Displaying static Web content. You can configure an application to save content locally in Isolated Storage and then view it later in an embedded WebBrowser control.
• Displaying dynamically-generated Web content. You can point the WebBrowser control at HTML content that is constructed dynamically in the application code.

You can take a look at this post "Differences Between the Desktop and Device WebBrowser Controls for Windows Phone" for reference. 

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit controls

Silverlight Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. The following controls are included, for some of them you can take a look at our "in depth" articles for reference:

• AutoCompleteBox
• ListPicker
• LongListSelector
• Page Transitions
• GestureService/GestureListener
• LoopingSelector
• ContextMenu
• DatePicker
• TimePicker
• ToggleSwitch
• WrapPanel
• HeaderedItemsControl

That was all about the available Windows Phone 7 controls. I hope that the article was helpful.

You can also follow us on Twitter @winphonegeek

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