Having trouble with a thumb in a Pivot control.

[startrunner]

Hello, fellow developers! I am developing a music player and I am trying to implement the 'Swipe on album art for next track' feature using a Thumb. My control works just fine unless I put it in a Pivot control For some reason, a Thumb in a Pivot/Panorama simply does not work. I tried to 'lock' the pivot control by changing property values and editing the template of the control but to no avail. All solutions I could find on the internet were for Silverlight applications and didn't work for me. As far as I know all music applications that have this feature, including XBM and Zune are Silverlight apps. Here is the XAML and code of my Control. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

<Grid>
        <TextBlock Margin="8" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" TextAlignment="Center" FontSize="18">Next Track</TextBlock>
        <TextBlock Margin="8" VerticalAlignment="Top" TextAlignment="Center" FontSize="18">Previous Track</TextBlock>
        <Thumb Name="thumbControl" Opacity="1" DragDelta="thumbControl_DragDelta" VerticalAlignment="Center" DragCompleted="thumbControl_DragCompleted" Height="{Binding ElementName=nowPlayingPicture, Path=ActualWidth}">
            <Thumb.Background>
                <ImageBrush Stretch="Fill" ImageSource="ms-appx:///Assets/albumArtPlaceholder.jpg"/>
            </Thumb.Background>
        </Thumb>
    </Grid>

 public sealed partial class NowPlayingPicutre : UserControl
    {
        public NowPlayingPicutre()
        {
            this.InitializeComponent();
            this.Loaded += NowPlayingPicutre_Loaded;
            this.LayoutUpdated += NowPlayingPicutre_LayoutUpdated;
        }

        public DependencyProperty nextTrackCommandProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("NextTrackCommand", typeof(ICommand), typeof(NowPlayingPicutre), PropertyMetadata.Create(false));
        public ICommand NextTrackCommand
        {
            get { return GetValue(nextTrackCommandProperty) as ICommand; }
            set { SetValue(nextTrackCommandProperty, value as ICommand); }
        }

        public DependencyProperty previousTrackCommandProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("PreviousTrackCommand", typeof(ICommand), typeof(NowPlayingPicutre), PropertyMetadata.Create(false));
        public ICommand PreviousTrackCommand
        {
            get { return GetValue(previousTrackCommandProperty) as ICommand; }
            set { SetValue(previousTrackCommandProperty, value as ICommand); }
        }

        void NowPlayingPicutre_LayoutUpdated(object sender, object e)
        {
            this.Height = this.ActualWidth;
        }

        void NowPlayingPicutre_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            thumbControl.Height = this.ActualHeight;
        }

        private enum DragDirection { Up, Down, Unset };
        DragDirection dragDirection = DragDirection.Unset;

        private void thumbControl_DragDelta(object sender, DragDeltaEventArgs e)
        {
            try
            {
                if (dragDirection == DragDirection.Unset)
                {
                    if (e.VerticalChange > 0) dragDirection = DragDirection.Down;
                    else dragDirection = DragDirection.Up;
                }

                if (dragDirection == DragDirection.Down) thumbControl.VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignment.Bottom;
                else thumbControl.VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignment.Top;

                double newHeight = thumbControl.Height;
                if (dragDirection == DragDirection.Up) newHeight += e.VerticalChange;
                else newHeight -= e.VerticalChange;

                if (newHeight < 0.9 * this.ActualHeight) newHeight = 0.9 * this.ActualHeight;
                if (newHeight > this.ActualHeight) newHeight = this.ActualHeight;

                thumbControl.Height = newHeight;
            }
            catch { }
        }

        private void thumbControl_DragCompleted(object sender, DragCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            if (thumbControl.Height <= 0.95 * this.ActualHeight)
            {
                try
                {
                    if(dragDirection==DragDirection.Down)PreviousTrackCommand.Execute(null);
                    if (dragDirection == DragDirection.Up) NextTrackCommand.Execute(null);
                }
                catch { }
            }
                dragDirection = DragDirection.Unset;
                thumbControl.Height = this.ActualHeight;            
        }
    }

 

[ibats]

As for me the problem is in pivot view, it captures all the events first and your Thumb just don't get any info about them. Pivot need to do that for navigation between pages. So I would suggest you check this articles, as I remember they have the same problem with capturing on ListBox:
A Gesture-Driven Windows Phone To-Do List - CodeProject
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/473582/Clearer-A-Gesture-Driven-Windows-To-Do-Applicati

Cheers