I'm new to WP7, coming from .Net/Silverlight. I like the Panorama idea, which would work well with the application I have in mind. However, on the side of the panorama, I need to have a few other screens which do not interact with the main Panorama, so I was thinking of creating a menu at the beginning to select in which branch the user wants to go. Can I use the Panorama app to meet this need, or do I need to do a classic app and handle myself the screen transitions?
You can do this with the panorama.
It's quite common for a panorama to have an item which is a menu containing links to other parts of the app.