by brad
28. October 2010 04:00
The Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone is a collection of open source controls that provide an easy way to implement functionality that is not so easy to implement using the standard Windows Phone developer tools. Our next few tips we’ll walk through each of the controls available in the toolkit. But first, we’ll look at the toolkit from a high level and look at how to use it in your project.
What’s in the Toolkit
As of this blog post, the latest version of the Toolkit available is the Sep 2010 version which includes the following controls: (As I write tips for these controls, I’ll link to the articles)
- Gesture Service – for helping you interpret when users have made specific gestures, such as flicking
- Context Menu – for implementing the Windows Phone equivalent of a right-click menu. These menus are accessed by tapping and holding
- DatePicker – for letting users select dates with a control made specifically for selecting dates. Beats typing them in by hand
- TimePicker – Same as DatePicker, but for times instead of dates
- ToggleSwitch – Similar to the ON/OFF switches you see on the iPhone. A classier version of a checkbox
- WrapPanel – the old standby WrapPanel that came from WPF, leaked into Silverlight through the Silverlight Toolkit, and now is available for Windows Phone.
Installing the Toolkit
You can get the latest version of the Toolkit at http://silverlight.codeplex.com/. Note that there are two toolkits available here: One for regular Silverlight and one for Phone Silverlight so be sure you get the right one.
When you install the toolkit, the binaries will be placed in a folder very similar to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Toolkit\Sep10\Bin”. If you lose track of them, you can find a shortcut in your Start menu.
Stay tuned … we’ll look at the Gesture Service in tomorrow’s tip.
Other Resources
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