Chapter 11. Creating Expansive and Engaging Apps with the Pivot and Panorama

In the past, Silverlight web or desktop applications that needed to present a large amount of information have usually done so by splitting the information across multiple pages. The Pivot and Panorama controls complement the existing page navigation infrastructure to provide the ability to present a large amount of information on a single page.

Pivot and Panorama are new controls and at the time of writing are unique to the phone. Both controls are fundamental to the visual user experience on the phone, and the phone’s built-in apps use them extensively. You will, therefore, probably find yourself using them a lot, although they are not necessarily a suitable choice for every app.

This chapter begins by looking at both controls, their differences and similarities. It then looks at the anatomy of the Pivot and how to create a simple Pivot driven page. You see how to use the Pivot load events, allowing you to load content on demand. You explore a novel approach that allows you to associate a different application bar with each PivotItem using a custom AppBar control, which is not readily achievable with the built-in ApplicationBar! Putting it all together, you learn how to create a Pivot driven chat app, which is then augmented to demonstrate implicit PivotItem generation and data templating.

The second part of this chapter explores the Panorama. Again you look at the anatomy of the Panorama and discuss how to get the most out of the control. You learn how to create a simple bookshop app that uses a WCF service to retrieve a list of products displayed within a Panorama, and the chapter concludes by looking at some of the things to avoid when using a Pivot or Panorama.