Introduction of using Windows Phone Toolkit vol.1 : Download and prepare to use toolkit

Introduction of using Windows Phone Toolkit vol.1 : Download and prepare to use toolkit
Introduction of using Windows Phone Toolkit vol.2 : Tilt effect
Introduction of using Windows Phone Toolkit vol.3 : Transitions
Introduction of using Windows Phone Toolkit vol.4 : ContextMenu
Introduction of using Windows Phone Toolkit vol.5 : List Picker


I'd like to introduce powerful tool of making Windows Phone app. The tool is Windows Phone Toolkit.
Windows Phone Toolkit has a lot of functionality that you can use Windows Phone standard UI actions, for instance, paging, click action, listbox functions, and etc.

• Install Windows Phone Toolkit

Access the URL and download both toolkit (msi) and samples (zip).

And run msi file. After installing, you can find binaries in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Toolkit\Oct11\Bin.

Before you start coding, you should check sample project (zip). There are cool samples and you can easily recognize the functionality.

• Setup your project

To use Windows Phone Toolkit in your app, I'll show you short steps.

First, add reference of both Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll and Microsoft.Phone.Controls.dll into your project.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Toolkit\Oct11\Bin\Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Libraries\Silverlight\Microsoft.Phone.Controls.dll

Second, define toolkit in all of your xaml pages.

xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"

 <phone:PhoneApplicationPage   
   x:Class="Memo.MainPage"  
   xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  
   xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  
   xmlns:phone="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"  
   xmlns:shell="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"  
   xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"  
   xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"  
   xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"  
   mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="480" d:DesignHeight="768"  
   FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}"  
   FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}"  
   Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}"  
   SupportedOrientations="Portrait" Orientation="Portrait"  
   shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True">  

That's all. It's very easy to start to use Windows Phone Toolkit. I'll show you functionality next blog post.