@Glenn Thank you! - could you tell me a bit more about your scenario? Say Pivot could work well for draggable controls like sliders… is that what you would like to see? I’d love to understand user scenarios that would need of Pivot. Drop me an email to arturot (microsoft). Also, one way I’ve seen this done before is having a toggle Icon Button in the App Bar (ideally there) so that the user locks the Pivot page, then interacts with controls, then unlocks to keep moving… sounds like too much work for users but it works. I can’t remember what app I saw this in. Another option is to make the Pivot shorter so you leave some controls “outside” of the Pivot itself. The user can interact with draggable controls here without swiping the Pivot… potentially in this scenario you could programatically change the controls every time the user moves between Pivot pages so each page has the controls it needs. (When I say page here I mean Pivot page, not Page :))

The reason I’m so interested in this particular area is because I specifically work on tools which enable cross platform deployment of mobile applications. Windows Phone’s idiosyncrasies are right up there with BlackBerry’s lack of touchscreen.

Right now, the only choice is to crowbar in an iPhone/Android style toolbar which looks a bit like Windows Phone’s Application Bar, but which is less limited.

I keenly await your Android/iOS metaphors post.

What about tiles? Do tiles fit inside panoramas or the visual infomation (panorama picture and pictures on the tiles) is too much?

@Glenn: Good question - We have a pattern called Shuffle Cards or Pages which is basically a Pivot whose Pages present completely different content (not from the same database) as you mention in the Music app in iOS. So yes, you could use a Pivot - now if you need those Pivots to use draggable controls then you might need to use a Page as the main hub (menU to Podcasts, Artists, Songs) and that Page connects to other individual Pages so that you can have draggable controls. Another option I think is if the draggable controls are mainly the music player controls like a time slider… then you could put this *outside* of the Pivot control so that this control stays in place while the user flicks to go from Pivot page to Pivot page but the play controls stay in place. They can be dragged without making the Pivot flick because they are outside the Pivot.

We’ll have a post in the future about iOS and Android metaphors and how we translate to Windows Phone.

@Stilgar - Panoramas can have a “main menu” on Panel 1. Then Panel 2, 3, 4 can have only featured content. If you only need a main menu (as in a list) then you could simply use a Page - not a Panorama…

For example, something like the Music app on iOS (formerly iPod) - The toolbar navigates between Podcasts, Artists, Songs, iTunes U etc. These are not necessarily different ways of presenting the same data (you site this as a reason for using pivots).

I mean, if you’re just using pages how would you suggest the user navigates between them?

I’m really interested to know what your thoughts are on how Windows Phone would present application structures that already exist on other platforms.