Hail to the swiss army knife of Silverlight Windows Phone Apps LongListSelector

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Today,  David Anson announced the second release of the Silverlight for Windows Phone  toolkit.   

This release doubles the number of controls in the kit, includes page transitions, ListPicker, and the new Swiss Army style control for Windows Phone: LongListSelector..
I am still getting deep into LongListSelector and trying to fit into some apps, but the potential for it is so great, I am doing a preview post on it..

LongListSelector started as a list that would address the requirements for lists similar to the people hub list.. 
Headers and Footers that scrolls with the items in the list (see how the “new releases” header scrolls with the list items, this is great for panoramas )

, WP7_1 (62)                      WP7_1 (63)WP7_1 (65)

It then morphed into grouping ( similar to Quick Jump Grid control )  

WP7_1 (67)

WP7_1 (66)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally but still equally important as a very performant listbox where you have a lot of control on how items are virtualized, how fast the list scrolls, how big your bounces are, etc.
LongListSelector  uses a different scrolling mechanism ( animation on render thread ) and different virtualization strategy ( not a VirtualizingStackPanel) that results in better, smoother scrolling in most ListBoxes…

image

What are you waiting for???  Go download the toolkit from codeplex…

Happy Windows Phone Coding!

PS --- Test thoroughly.. With this high degree of customization and so many features into a single control, it is not too hard to make a mistake..  Make sure as you replace your standard listboxes with LongListSelector, you tune the knobs so it works just right for your app..