What's the best way to emulate a tab control in SL2? 

I would probably use an Horizontal StackPanel that contains radio buttons to manage the tab :

 </Grid.Resources>
         <Grid.RowDefinitions>
         <RowDefinition Height="30" />
         <RowDefinition Height="*" />
      </Grid.RowDefinitions>
         <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
         <RadioButton VerticalAlignment="Top"
                       Height="30"
                       Width="100"
                       Content="Tab1"
                       Style="{StaticResource tabishRadioButton}"
                       Checked="RadioButton_Checked"/>
         <RadioButton VerticalAlignment="Top"
                       Height="30"
                       Width="100"
                       Content="Tab2"
                      Margin="2,0,0,0"
                      Style="{StaticResource tabishRadioButton}"
                      Checked="RadioButton_Checked_2"/>
      </StackPanel>

I would then add a border to draw the "tabcontrol" border and add grids for each tabs I want to use. I would then simply change their visibility property to collapsed or visible based on the radio button values : 

  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
      <Grid.Resources>
         <Style TargetType="RadioButton"
                x:Key="tabishRadioButton">
            <Setter Property="Template">
               <Setter.Value>
                  <ControlTemplate TargetType="RadioButton">
                     <Grid x:Name="RootElement">
                       
                        <Border x:Name="tabBorder"
                                BorderBrush="Black"
                                BorderThickness="1"
                                Background="White"
                                CornerRadius="4,4,0,0">
                           <ContentPresenter Content="{TemplateBinding Content}"
                                             VerticalAlignment="Center"
                                             HorizontalAlignment="Center" />
                        </Border>
                     </Grid>
                  </ControlTemplate>
               </Setter.Value>
            </Setter>

         </Style>
      </Grid.Resources>
         <Grid.RowDefinitions>
         <RowDefinition Height="30" />
         <RowDefinition Height="*" />
      </Grid.RowDefinitions>
         <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
         <RadioButton VerticalAlignment="Top"
                       Height="30"
                       Width="100"
                       Content="Tab1"
                       Style="{StaticResource tabishRadioButton}"
                       Checked="RadioButton_Checked"/>
         <RadioButton VerticalAlignment="Top"
                       Height="30"
                       Width="100"
                       Content="Tab2"
                      Margin="2,0,0,0"
                      Style="{StaticResource tabishRadioButton}"
                      Checked="RadioButton_Checked_2"/>
      </StackPanel>
      <Border BorderBrush="Black"
              Grid.Row="1"
              BorderThickness="1,1,1,1">
         <Grid>
            <Grid x:Name="tab1Content"
                  Visibility="Collapsed">
               <Border Background="Red"/>
            </Grid>
            <Grid x:Name="tab2Content"
                  Visibility="Collapsed">
               <Border Background="Blue"/>
            </Grid>
            </Grid>
      </Border>

   </Grid>

 A lot of the work would consist of making this visually appealing :) but this would be how I would start to do a tabControl ... without the control :) Good luck !

Mathieu Drimonakos
Technical Designer
www.xceed.com

Awesome! Thanks!! I sure hope Microsoft adds a 'tab' like control to the next version of SL. 

No problem, like I mentioned the biggest part will be on how you design it visually. The basics cool be something like this :

 <Style TargetType="RadioButton"
                x:Key="tabishRadioButton">
            <Setter Property="Template">
               <Setter.Value>
                  <ControlTemplate TargetType="RadioButton">
                     <Grid x:Name="RootElement">
                       
                        <Border x:Name="tabBorder"
                                BorderBrush="Black"
                                BorderThickness="1"
                                Background="White"
                                CornerRadius="4,4,0,0">
                           <ContentPresenter Content="{TemplateBinding Content}"
                                             VerticalAlignment="Center"
                                             HorizontalAlignment="Center" />
                        </Border>
                     </Grid>
                  </ControlTemplate>
               </Setter.Value>
            </Setter>
         </Style>

Oh and don't forget to mark my post as Answered if it helped :).

Mathieu Drimonakos
Technical Designer
www.xceed.com

Thak you!  I test it.

Cheers,

Hi,

Is it possible to change the background, border colour or highlight the tab in some way when one of the tabs is selected.

I have tried this code . Its compiling fine but on runtime its throwing exception:

A first chance exception of type 'System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException' occurred in System.Windows.dll

Additional information: AG_E_PARSER_BAD_PROPERTY_VALUE [Line: 40 Position: 54]

and is showing a blank page on continuing with run.

What is the possible cause Can u help in resolving this?

refer to http://silverlight.net/forums/p/15569/51705.aspx#51705. It works!