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Problems with flyout over itemscontrol in Windows Phone 8.1

I've got the following piece of XAML code:
<Grid Grid.Row="1" x:Name="ContentRoot" Margin="19,9.5,19,0">
<ScrollViewer>
<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding History}">
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" Tapped="HistoryItemTapped">
<FlyoutBase.AttachedFlyout>
<Flyout>
<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch">
<ScrollViewer>
<TextBlock Foreground="{ThemeResource PhoneMidBrush}" FontSize="{ThemeResource TextStyleExtraLargeFontSize}" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Text="{Binding Expression}" />
</ScrollViewer>
<ScrollViewer>
<TextBlock FontSize="{ThemeResource TextStyleExtraLargePlusFontSize}" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Text="{Binding Result}" />
</ScrollViewer>
</StackPanel>
</Flyout>
</FlyoutBase.AttachedFlyout>
<TextBlock Foreground="{ThemeResource PhoneMidBrush}" FontSize="{ThemeResource TextStyleExtraLargeFontSize}" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Text="{Binding Expression}"
TextTrimming="CharacterEllipsis"/>
<TextBlock FontSize="{ThemeResource TextStyleExtraLargePlusFontSize}" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Text="{Binding Result}"
TextTrimming="CharacterEllipsis"/>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>
</ScrollViewer>
</Grid>
There are two problems I can't solve:
The flyout is shown upon tapping on one of items:
private void HistoryItemTapped(object sender, TappedRoutedEventArgs e)
{
FlyoutBase.GetAttachedFlyout((FrameworkElement)sender).ShowAt((FrameworkElement)sender);
}
However, no matter how I set up the flyout it always shows on the top of the screen, not over the tapped item. Why?
The flyout contains two TextBlocks on separate ScrollViewers. The text on one of them exceeds width of the flyout, bt the scrollviewer does not appear to be working (I cannot scroll horizontally the textblock). Why is that?

So let's knock these out real quick. Your #1 would be expected result, it's just going off the default FlyoutPlacementMode enumeration wherein generally your flyout is just meant to appear over the top in one of 5 spots, Top, Bottom, Left, Right, or Full(Center)
How to fix it, ditch the flyout control and just animate your own panel to do the same thing on a tap event or whatever, not hard at all.
Your #2, if I remember right the default on ScrollViewerfor something like the HorizontalScrollBarVisibility is False by default. So just add HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" to it.
Hope this helps, cheers

Text longlistselector not completely visible

I have a little problem using the longlistselector (well more specifically the multilonglistselector) in windows phone 8.
I use binding to bind the name of an object to the items, the XAML code is as follow:
<Grid>
<TextBox x:Name="searchBox"
IsEnabled="{Binding IsConnected}"
HorizontalAlignment="Left" KeyUp="CheckKey"
Height="72" Margin="10,10,0,0" TextWrapping="Wrap" InputScope="Search" GotFocus="Select"/>
<toolkit:LongListMultiSelector EnforceIsSelectionEnabled="True" SelectionChanged="AdjustAddSelectionButton" x:Name="resultList" ItemsSource="{Binding Results}" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Height="434" Margin="10,87,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" >
<toolkit:LongListMultiSelector.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Grid>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" TextWrapping="Wrap">
<toolkit:GestureService.GestureListener>
<toolkit:GestureListener DoubleTap="OpenArticleDetail" />
</toolkit:GestureService.GestureListener>
</TextBlock>
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
</toolkit:LongListMultiSelector.ItemTemplate>
</toolkit:LongListMultiSelector>
</Grid>
The Binding takes place perfectly, but the text is sometimes too long and doesn't fit the screen. How would I go about wrapping this text to another line?, I 'll give a screenshot here

You didn't really state any specific problem or question you want answered. Please try to be a bit more clear in the future.
If you don't like that the TextBlock cuts off words that it can't fit, then you have several solutions.
TextBlocks have a TextWrapping property, so doing TextWrapping="Wrap" will enable the TextBlock to resize itself to display all the content.
TextBlocks have the TextTrimming property, so writing TextTrimming="WordEllipsis" will replace any cut off words with an ellipsis.
If you want to keep the one line but also show all the content, you can put the TextBlock inside a Horizontal ScrollViewer, which will let the user scroll the text left and right. Not great, but a decent solution
Code for 3.
<ScrollViewer ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Visible">
<TextBlock Text="Text"/>
</ScrollViewer>

I added a huge right padding to my main TextBlock to work around this issue.
<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>
<DataTemplate x:Key="MyTemplate">
<StackPanel VerticalAlignment="Top" Margin="0,-4,-50,0">
<TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" FontSize="18" Text="{Binding title}" TextWrapping="Wrap" Margin="0,0,0,6"/>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding text}" TextWrapping="Wrap" FontSize="30" Padding="0,0,125,0"/>
<Rectangle HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Height="1" Fill="#78c5a6" Margin="0,18,0,18"/>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
</phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>

Why does the button size increases as the listbox size gets populated with data?

I'm a newbie to c#. I have designed a windows program with button and listbox. The listbox populates the log as the script runs the application. However, as the listbox gets populated with log, the button and label increases which makes the stack panel very ugly?
Any help/advice would be appreciated. Below is my xaml code.
<Grid>
<Border BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="2" Margin="0,11,0,5" CornerRadius="5" Background="White">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="7,10,7,2">
<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
<TextBlock Text="City" Margin="5" HorizontalAlignment="Center"></TextBlock>
<ComboBox Name="City" SelectedValue="Chicago" SelectedValuePath="Name">
<ComboBox.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Name,Mode=OneWay}"></TextBlock>
</DataTemplate>
</ComboBox.ItemTemplate>
</ComboBox>
</StackPanel>
<Button Name="btnEnter" Content="Enter" Width="200" Margin="4" Padding="6" Click="btnEnter_Click"></Button>
<Button Name="btnViewLog" Content="View Log" Width="100" Margin="4" Padding="6" Click="btnLog_Click"></Button>
<ListBox Name="lbLog" Visibility="Collapsed">
<ListBox.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<TextBox Text="{Binding Description}" IsReadOnly="True" BorderThickness="0" Background="Transparent"></TextBox>
</DataTemplate>
</ListBox.ItemTemplate>
</ListBox>
</StackPanel>
Thanks.
Ash

Without your Xaml, it is hard to diagnose the problem, so please try to post it with any further questions. It SOUNDS like it is a horizontal StackPanel, and the elements are all next to each other.
If the orientation of your StackPanel is Vertical, set the HorizontalAlignment on the button to Left, Right, or Center. If the StackPanel orientation is Horizontal, set the VerticalAlignment on the button to Top, Bottom, or Center.
I'm pretty certain both settings are "Stretch" by default, which means they will try to fill all the space that is available, rather than sizing to their content.

WPF Listbox : How to bind data?

I have a listBox and add data to it like so:
for (int x = 0; x < Orchestrator.Instance.getTopicCount(); x++)
{
listTopics.Items.Add(Orchestrator.Instance.getTopic(x));
}
But I need to be able to do things like have text wrapping and divider lines, so I would like to do it the XAML.
Microsoft shows this:
<TextBlock Width="248" Height="24"
Text="{Binding ElementName=lbColor, Path=SelectedItem.Content,
Mode=OneWay}"
x:Name="tbSelectedColor"
Background="{Binding ElementName=lbColor, Path=SelectedItem.Content,
Mode=OneWay}"/>
But I don't really understand it. Here is my XAML:
<ListBox Height="261" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="352,38,0,0" Name="listContent" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="391" Grid.Column="1" HorizontalContentAlignment="Left" VerticalContentAlignment="Center" MaxWidth="391" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled"/>
How am I able to achieve what I want? (Divider lines, text wrapping so I don't have to scroll horizontally, and data binding)

To specify the layout of each item, there are two different things you can change: the ItemContainerStyle, which provides the ControlTemplate used for each ListBoxItem, or the ItemTemplate, which provides the DataTemplate that is used to render each data item. The ItemTemplate is simpler to use if you're just getting started and haven't gotten the hang of ControlTemplates yet.
To get your text to wrap, there are two key things to do. Turn off the default horizontal scrolling of ListBox (which you got already), and set the TextWrapping property of your TextBlock to Wrap. To get to the TextBlock you need to define it in your ItemTemplate. Here's a simple example of the template declared inline, though you could also pull it out as a Resource. For the dividing line I used the simplest approach of a Border with only a bottom black line.
<ListBox x:Name="listContent" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled">
<ListBox.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Border BorderThickness="0,0,0,1" BorderBrush="Black">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding}" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
</Border>
</DataTemplate>
</ListBox.ItemTemplate>
</ListBox>

It seems that you will have to ascend the rather steep learning curve for how to use databinding in WPF first. Thereafter you should learn about DataTemplates and ItemTemplates to get the dividers and so forth.
Try this to get you started
A book I can heartily recommend is WPF in Action from Manning.

You need to define the ItemTemplate of your ListBox.
In your resources, add this:
<DataTemplate x:Key="myItemTemplate" TargetType="ListBoxItem">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding}"/>
</DataTemplate>
Supposing that your getTopic method returns a string, otherwise use {Binding MyTopicProperty} where MyTopicProperty is a property in your Topic class. Customize the TextBlock as you need.
Then use your ListBox like this:
<ListBox ItemTemplate="{StaticResource myItemTemplate"/>

here is an example how to bind listbox with RSS feed with DataTemplate:
<UserControl.Resources>
<XmlDataProvider x:Key ="DataRSS" XPath="//item" Source="http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/629/f/502199/index.rss">< /XmlDataProvider>
</UserControl.Resources>
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center">
<ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource DataRSS}}" Height="516" Margin="0,0,32,0" Background="{x:Null}" BorderBrush="#FF627DAE">
<ListBox.ItemTemplate >
<DataTemplate >
<Grid Width="400" Height="100" >
<Image Source="{Binding XPath=enclosure/#url}" Grid.Column="0" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" />
<TextBlock TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="{Binding XPath=title}" FontWeight="Bold" Grid.Column="2"/>
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
</ListBox.ItemTemplate>
</ListBox>
</StackPanel>
</grid>

WPF Create a slide out panel

I don't know how this works technically but my requirement is as follows. I have a DataGrid and to input data into the DataGrid, I want a panel at the bottom of the DataGrid that slides out on a button click showing input options. Except, as the panel slides out, the DataGrid has to resize vertically as well. Can someone throw some light on how I can implement this?

You should be able to use a StackPanel with 2 children, your grid and your panel. Set the initial height of your panel to 0. Once the button is clicked, set the height to whatever you need it to be (e.g., MyPanel.Height = 20). You might want to wrap the grid in a ScrollViewer in case that is needed.
<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
<ScrollViewer Height="Auto" VerticalAlignment="Stretch">
<Grid Height="*" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" />
</ScrollViewer>
<ContentControl x:Name="MyPanel" Height="0" />
</StackPanel>
You might need to experiment with VerticalAlignment and Height="Auto" or Height="0" to get the layout you want.

You can use Expander. Please look at the following code snippet.
<DockPanel>
<Expander DockPanel.Dock="Bottom">
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock Height="25"></TextBlock>
<TextBlock Height="25"></TextBlock>
<TextBlock Height="25"></TextBlock>
</StackPanel>
</Expander>
<Border BorderBrush="LightGreen" BorderThickness="2">
<DataGrid/>
</Border>
</DockPanel >