Expression Blend Tools and Overview
There are several different types of Windows Phone project types that you can choose to create:
Basic, Databound, Panorama, Pivot, and Windows Phone Control Library. In this tutorial you discover
the differences and start a Basic application. Before you get started, make sure that you have downloaded
the Windows Phone Developer tools and the Starting_to_Design_Assets folder for this tutorial.
Expression Blend Provides Several Windows Phone templates:
Windows Phone Application: Generates a basic application with a single start page and header.
Windows Phone Databound Application: Generates an application in a Model/View/ViewModel (MVVM) style, with sample data exposed in ViewModel classes.
Windows Phone Panorama Application: This template creates an application with the Panorama Control, which provides a multipage view of options with a parallax scrolling background.
Windows Phone Pivot Application: The Pivot control is much like a Tab Control, but tuned for a gesture-based interface. This template creates an application with the Pivot as its primary navigation.
Windows Phone Control Library: Enables you to create a collection of controls that you can reuse across several projects.
What's covered in this video:
- Information about the Windows Phone Developer tools
- Different types of projects
- Creating a new project
- Running the Windows Phone emulator
Adding Sample Data to Your Project
The Sample Data feature in Expression Blend allows you to create or import data that can be used to design a user interface around.
In this tutorial you will add a data source and then add the ListBox control to the UI.
You will also find out how to edit the ListBox template to customize its look and feel.
What's covered in this video:
- Adding sample data to your project
- Adding a data source
- Creating a ListBox
- Customizing the ListBox template
- Adding a details page to the application
Adding Navigation and Interactivity
Windows Phone applications can consist of multiple Pages, which are navigated between much like navigating to pages in a Web Browser. A history of the pages is stored, and pressing the device’s Back button will cause the application to go to the previous page.
In this example application we want the user to be able to Navigate from our one page in our application to another. To do this, you will use a Behavior.
Behaviors allow logic to be injected into a user control at runtime, and can be initiated using a Trigger. For example, an animation could be triggered when the user
taps on an image. In this example, you will use a NavigateToPageAction to navigate between pages.
What's covered in this video:
- Using the NavigateTo behavior
- Adding a custom GoToPage behavior
- Linking one page to another
Conclusion
This tutorial provided an introduction to using Blend for creating Windows Phone applications.
You discovered the differences between the different Windows Phone Application templates and learned about the Emulator.
You also saw how quickly you can create pages based on sample data, and even add runtime logic using Behaviors.
