Xpert360 PivotViewer Blog Article Index

[Last updated: 2011-06-22]

Introduction

This post is intended to be a landing place to bring together links to our growing collection of PivotViewer articles in one place. We will update this article to reflect new blog posts and other useful links.

If you are not familiar with overriding the Silverlight PivotViewer control’s OnApplyTemplate() method then I recommend taking the time to work through the posts in the ‘Adventures with PivotViewer’ series and build up your portfolio of customization skills.

These articles are based on the version of the control shipped separately from the Silverlight 4 SDK. We will update and extend articles with information relevant to Silverlight 5 SDK as they become available. If you are already customizing your PivotViewer experience then dive right in:

Adventures with PivotViewer

• Part 1: Background work
• Part 2: Themes and Integrated DataGrid
• Part 3: Localization
• Part 4: Augmented PDC10 reality – pivot the agenda
• Part 5: Pimp my PivotViewer
• Part 6: Pimp it sample code
• Part 7: Slider control
• Part 8: Filter pane tooltips
• Part 9: Multi-Layered Trading Cards tooltips
• Part 10: Let’s do the Timelapse Warp

PivotViewer Shorts

• Part 1: Hide Filter Pane Search Box
• Part 2: Hide View and SortBy Buttons
• Part 3: Hide Collection Path
• Part 4 Restyle the ZoomSlider child controls
• Part 5: Invert the Facet Category Selection

PivotViewer Miscellaneous

• Visualization of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace with PivotViewer
• PivotViewer vNext in Silverlight 5 SDK

Examples on the Internet

• BioPivot – University of Oxford, UK
• Buxton Collection – Bill Buxton’s UX devices
• Classic Cardboard – ProjectVerona
• Cricket Video Vault – Blackcaps
• Flickr Demo – LobsterPot
• Good Coffee Good Code – Chris Arnold
• percollate – social media dashboard
• PhotoPivot – organize your photo collection
• tweetpivot – pivot the twitterverse
• Microsoft BI Customers – BI > Solutions > Customers
• MVPChat – MVP Twitter Threads
• Netflix instant watch movies+ – Windows Azure Team
• PivotViewer Interactive Demos – Official Microsoft Silverlight
• Fourth Coffee
• Endangered Species
• New Cars
• World Leaders
• The TEAM Project – UCSD and Conservation International
• Top SharePoint Internet Sites – WSSDEMO
• Windows Phone 7 Marketplace
• WP7 App Hub

Further things to do and resources

• PivotViewer Home – Microsoft Silverlight
• PivotViewer Control – Public API
• Sample Code for JIT PivotViewer Collections
• Download Pivot Application – Microsoft Research
• Microsoft Silverlight Forums – PivotViewer Control
• MVP Tony Champion tutorials
• Xpert360 Ltd – who allow time for blogging

Conclusion

This article is an anchor page to our blog articles concerning the Silverlight PivotViewer control. There are a range of articles topics and technical levels. Some target the developer who is ready to start customizing the Silverlight PivotViewer control beyond the documented public API, whilst others show examples of what can be achieved.

Any comments or request for future topics are welcome.

MIX11 OpenCall Voting – Session picker

MIX11 PivotViewer Sessions containing Geolocation

We are really looking forward to MIX11 and with 207 sessions to choose from, we decided to take a couple of hours and put together a Pivot collection to provide a little help with narrowing down exactly which sessions you want to vote for.

Run the Silverlight MIX11 OPEN CALL application. As with all silverlight apps, works fine on most browsers and OS.

MIX11 PivotViewer Sessions on Razor

MIX11 PivotViewer Session Speakers

Adventures with PivotViewer Part 8: Filter pane tooltips

Introduction

Adding tooltips to the left side filter pane not surprisingly requires the use of a customized PivotViewer control:

You should be familiar with the following line of code to get the CollectionViewerView from earlier blog posts and samples.

CollectionViewerView cvv =
((CollectionViewerView)((Grid)
this.GetTemplateChild(“PART_Container”)).Children[0]);

If you are not familiar with this then I would recommend taking the time to work through the other posts in this series and build up you portfolio of PivotViewer customization skills.

• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 1: Background work
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 2: Themes and Integrated DataGrid
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 3: Localization
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 4: Augmented PDC10 reality – pivot the agenda
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 5: Pimp my PivotViewer
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 6: Pimp it sample code
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 7: Slider control
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 8: Filter pane tooltips
• Visualization of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace with PivotViewer
• Adventures with PivotViewer Part 9: Multi-Layered Trading Cards tooltips 
• Visualization of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace with PivotViewer
• PivotViewer vNext in Silverlight 5 SDK

Locating the UI Elements and attaching ToolTips

Tooltips can be set on controls in code behind using the ToolTipService. Normally you might use the ToolTip attached property of the ToolTipService class and the ToolTip control in your XAML.

The flow of the code goes something like this:

• Locate the “PART_FacetPane” in the tree. This is a CustomAccordian control.
• Locate the CustomAccordianItem‘s ( == facets)
• … under each item is a FacetCategory control to find the facet category name.
• … use the TooltipService to set custom tooltips on the CustomAccordianItem‘s

FilterPaneView FPV = (FilterPaneView)PivotViewer.CollectionView.FindName(“PART_FilterPane”();
CustomAccordion FacetPane = (CustomAccordion)FPV.FindName(“PART_FacetPane”);
StackPanel itemsHost = (StackPanel)FacetPane.GetItemsHost();
for (int nitem = 0; nitem < itemsHost.Children.Count; nitem++)
{
CustomAccordionItem item = (CustomAccordionItem)itemsHost.Children[nitem];
// tooltip for facet category header
stringtooltip;
string facetName = ((FacetCategory)item.Content).Name;
switch(facetName){
case “AppCount”:tooltip = “Count of applications in the Marketplace”;
break;
case “Ranking”:tooltip = “Overall ranking in the Marketplace”;
break;

…

ToolTipService.SetToolTip(item, “Facet:\n”+ tooltip);

If you take a look at this set of pivot collections, visualizing the WP7 Marketplace, you will see facet tooltips are implemented:
WP7 APP HUB

FAQ

If you want to try out the code there are a few things to watch out for. You will not be able to set the tooltips before the collection event CollectionLoadingCompleted has completed and exited. If you wrap your tooltip code in a function then you can call it from this event using the control’s dispatcher:

this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(SetToolTips);

You will need some internal Microsoft Pivot references and usings too. Depending upon the extent of your other customizations you will need these:

using System.Windows.Pivot;
using Microsoft.Pivot.Internal.Controls;
using Microsoft.Pivot.Internal.Model;
using Microsoft.Pivot.Internal.ViewModels;
using Microsoft.Pivot.Internal.Views;

Further things to do

 

• The code should be nicely wrapped up and encapsulated in the CustomPivotViewer override class.
• Can I format the content of the ToolTip control? Answer: Yes
• MSDN – ToolTipService Class
• PivotViewer Control – Public API
• Microsoft Silverlight Forums – PivotViewer Control
• Beyond plain text tooltips: Using the ToolTip control in Silverlight
• How to programmatically access ToolTipService of a Silverlight FrameworkElement?
• MVP Tony Champion tutorials
• Xpert360 Ltd – who allow time for blogging

Conclusion

This article is just a brief tutorial that includes the key features of using the tooltip service control in code to attach custom tooltips to visual elements of the Silverlight PivotViewer control. It targets the developer who has already started customizing the Silverlight PivotViewer control beyond the public API. Any comments or request for future topics are welcome.