simple silverlight databinding listbox to List<>

It seems like this should be simple...

I have a usercontrol that I am going to use on several tabs of a tab control. I want all instances of the usercontrol to be synchronized.

In my usercontrol I have a list of strings:

public static List<string> fonts = new List<string>() { "Arial", "Courier" };

And a ListBox:

<ListBox x:Name="fontList" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=fonts}" />

开发者_JAVA技巧However, the listbox is never populated.

In searching for example code, it seems like I have seen this implementation in several samples, but I can't get it to work.

Thanks for any hints...

Updated with AWJ's suggestions, but still not working:

MainPage.xaml.cs:

public partial class MainPage : UserControl
{
    public static List<string> _fonts
        = new List<string>() { "Arial", "Courier" };

    public List<string> Fonts { get { return _fonts;  } }
}

In TestGroup.xaml:

<ListBox x:Name="fontList1" ItemsSource="{Binding Parent.Fonts, ElementName=LayoutRoot}"  Margin="3" />

• First of all you can only bind to Properties not Fields.
• Second the Property needs to be an instance property to support binding
• Third unless you make the UserControl its own DataContext you need a more sophisticated binding.

In code you will need:-

public static List<string> fonts = new List<string>() { "Arial", "Courier" };
public List<string> Fonts {get { return fonts; } }

and in xaml:-

<ListBox x:Name="fontlist" ItemsSource="{Binding Parent.Fonts, ElementName=LayoutRoot}" />