Pivot and Panorama Differences and Similarities

The Pivot and Panorama are layout controls that help you display data in a unique way. They have several things in common. They both hold a number of horizontally arranged sections (items). They are visually similar; both show a segment of the offscreen content, have titles, and have section titles.

Both controls have built-in touch navigation. It is, therefore, not necessary to implement any special gesture functionality in your app, because it is already built in. The touch support allows the user to navigate left to right between the different sections using the pan and flick touch-gestures.

Horizontal navigation is cyclical; after navigating past the last section, the first section appears.

Also, both the Pivot and Panorama allow complete customization of the title and headers.

Both controls have many similarities, but they also have some fundamental differences, because each control is designed to serve a different purpose. The Pivot is designed to be more task oriented; it is about getting something done. It has greater emphasis on each individual section within the control, and section content is confined to the width of the layout screen, whereas the Panorama has sections that span over screen boundaries and is designed to entice the user to explore all sections.

There are also performance differences between the two controls. When a Panorama loads, all Panorama items go through a render pass. Conversely, items within a Pivot are loaded incrementally for each neighboring item. Thus, the Pivot generally offers a faster start time.