Nokia Windows Phone: Question 2

We’re running a challenge wherein you can Win a Nokia Windows Phone. The rules of said competition are detailed in the aforelinked post. There will be many more questions over the coming weeks, here is Question 2.

Question 2

With its release in late 2010 the Windows Phone SDK included a number of controls that are styled with the same Metro design language that’s used throughout the core platform. These include standard controls such as TextBlock, for rendering text, Image, for displaying graphics, and TextBox, for capturing text input. However, there were some omissions such as a control that allows the user to select date and/or time, and an equivalent to a dropdown selection box used in most desktop applications. Windows Phone has a clear set of controls that the core platform uses but most of these weren’t made available with the SDK. It wasn’t until the Windows Phone Silverlight Toolkit was release that some of these controls were made available. More recently an upgrade has been made available to this toolkit that includes a host of new controls.

Other than the controls that ship with the Windows Phone SDK, what controls do you use in your application, and how do they make your application rock?