Adding WP7 Toolkit Controls to the Visual Studio Toolbox

published on: 3/31/2011 | Views: N/A | Tags: WP7Toolkit

by WindowsPhoneGeek

In this post I am going to talk about how to add the Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit controls to the Visual Studio Toolbox.

NOTE: By default when creating a Windows Phone 7 application the Visual Studio Toolbox contains only "Windows Phone Controls"  tab with the default controls like: ListBox, Button, ToggleButton, Image, etc.

Visual Studio Toolbox support is important when you want to "drag" and "drop" controls into the visual designer even without writing any code. Adding a control from the toolbox also automatically add the necessary namespaces (xmlns) to your page. So as a result you can write a simple WP7 app just with a few mouse clicks.

WP7 Toolkit controls are not automatically added to the Toolbox when you add a reference to Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll assembly so you will need to add them on your own,

To begin with lets first create a sample WP7 Application project and add a reference to Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll:

NOTE: In order to use the Toolbox at first you have to open a valid XAML page so that you will be able to "drag" and "drop"  controls there.

After that just follow the steps:

1. Go to the Visual Studio Toolbox tab , right click over General and select Add Tab from the context menu:

2. Give some name to the newly created toolbox section. In our case we will create a WP7Toolkit item:

3. Right click over the newly created WP7Toolkit and select Choose Items option from the context menu

4.After that just select the desired controls that you want to be visible in the Toolbox:

5. That`s it. Go to the Toolbox tab and select WP7Toolkit. You should be able to see the WP7 Toolkit control there:

6. Finally, just "drag" and "drop" the desired control over the design surface:

 

That was all about how to enable Visual Studio Toolbox support for the Silverlight for WP7 Toolkit controls.

I hope that the post was helpful.

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