Silverlight Toolkit November 2010 Update - What's New

published on: 11/8/2010 | Views: N/A | Tags: WP7Toolkit

by WindowsPhoneGeek

Silverlight Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7.
This is the first in a series of blog posts which run through the new controls from the Silverlight Toolkit November 2010 update. If you're not familiar with the Toolkit, check out the intro post of Tim Heuer that cover all about the  Existing Components :Gestures, ContextMenu, DatePicker, TimePicker, ToggleSwitch and WrapPanel.

The November update includes the following new controls.
o    AutoCompleteBox
o    ListPicker
o    LongListSelector
o    Page Transitions

In order to use them, first add a reference to Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll which is installed with the toolkit and you can find it in :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Toolkit\Nov10\Bin\Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll

After that you can use the controls with the toolkit prefix:

xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"

AutoCompleteBox
AutoCompleteBox represents a control that provides a text box for user input and a drop-down that contains possible matches based on the input in the text box.It is very important for implementing search or relevant matches functionality.

Example:

<toolkit:AutoCompleteBox  ItemsSource="{StaticResource words}"/>

ListPicker
ListPicker is the Windows Phone 7 equivalent of the ComboBox control. It has two kinds of list selection:
.    In-place list selection
.    Fullscreen popup for picking among more items
It is a standard ItemsControl subclass with all the common elements of a Selector.

  

Example:

<toolkit:ListPicker Header="background">
    <sys:String>dark</sys:String>
    <sys:String>light</sys:String>
    <sys:String>dazzle</sys:String>
</toolkit:ListPicker>

LongListSelector
It is more popular as "Jump Grid" or "Jump List" actually it is an advanced ListBox, that supports:

    . full data
    . UI virtualization
    . flat lists
    . grouped lists with headers

  

Example:

<toolkit:LongListSelector
    ItemsSource="{StaticResource movies}"
    ListHeaderTemplate="{StaticResource movieListHeader}"
    GroupHeaderTemplate="{StaticResource movieGroupHeader}"
    GroupFooterTemplate="{StaticResource movieGroupFooter}"
    GroupItemTemplate="{StaticResource groupItemHeader}"
    ItemTemplate="{StaticResource movieItemTemplate}">
</toolkit:LongListSelector>

Page Transitions
The following transition animations are available in the Nov 2010 Toolkit update:
.    Roll
.    Rotate
.    Slide,
.    Swivel
.    Turnstile
It's also possible to implement custom transitions using the same framework!
Based on the selected Transition you can set the Transition mode.

Example:

<toolkit:TransitionService.NavigationInTransition>
    <toolkit:NavigationInTransition>
        <toolkit:NavigationInTransition.Backward>
            <toolkit:TurnstileTransition Mode="BackwardIn"/>
        </toolkit:NavigationInTransition.Backward>
        <toolkit:NavigationInTransition.Forward>
            <toolkit:TurnstileTransition Mode="ForwardIn"/>
        </toolkit:NavigationInTransition.Forward>
    </toolkit:NavigationInTransition>
</toolkit:TransitionService.NavigationInTransition>

The sample application that come with the official Windows Phone Toolkit download offers a great overview of the controls but doesn't focus on some specific details. This series is all about details, so in the next few posts I will explain everything you need to know about each of the new components in depth.

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