Windows Phone icons, Button and Panorama

Windows Phone icons are cute. SDK7.1 comes with a set of commonly used icons (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.1\Icons).  CESPage.com also has a free set of cute icons though some of them are duplicates of the SDK's. Mashtech has a list of Top 10 Beautiful Minimalist Icon Sets.  Noun Project must be mentioned when it comes to icons.

If one cannot find a readily usable icon, the best way to create a new icon is using Expression Design and the large set of Segoe UI Symbol.  The icon size is 76x76. The Segoe Symbol font size should 30, and the color should solid white (so one cannot see it in Expression Design).

The Button control uses a style template that is not easy to change. Sometimes it is desirable to eliminate the space between adjacent Button controls.  This turns out to be surprisingly difficult.  The easiest way may be using negative margins, but this may have poor consequences when Button controls are mixed with other visual elements, and the dimensions of each control are needed for automatic arrangement.  It may be easier to just use a Canvas control with a mouse event handler in lieu of a Button control.  Canvas is a clean sheet allowing the full control and composition.

Panorama is one of the most touted features of Windows Phone 7. It is neat. It also has the issue of using a rigid style template. Its header can be empty, but the header's padding remains.  In this case, negative top margin may be the best way to remove it because a Panorama control is usually a large container with many elements inside it.