Ever since Windows Phone 7 was first announced, the UI features that grabbed most of our attention where panning and pivot, one for putting extra wide content on the phone, and the other to flick through panes. Developers were disappointed that these features didn’t quite make it into the WP7 preview release. Luckily, it’s been confirmed that these features will land in the official WP7 beta, and Jeff Wilcox — a Senior Windows Phone Software Development Engineer at Microsoft — has explained how to use them in his blog:
A panorama powers the people, music + videos, parts of Office, and more. Many of these have a large background and can be explored by panning and flicking between items. When you’re at one item, you will be able to see a little bit of the next item as well – a hint that there’s more to be explored. When you reach the far side of the panorama, you can keep going to wrap around to the beginning again, saving time.
A pivot control powers the e-mail and calendar pages, operating systems, etc. The top of the pivot control shows the headers for all the different items, and you can swipe and pan between the pages. Just like panorama, the control wraps infinitely – so when you reach the final item, instead of having to flick all the way back to the first item, you can just flick once more.
[via WMPU]
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