Expression Blend and Design

Say “Hello” to BlendInsider

2011-09-14T00:56:13Z

Hi everyone, If you have watched the BUILD keynotes and sessions , you may have seen some exciting things about Expression Blend’s support for Metro-style applications. For all future news and updates concerning Expression Blend, please visit our new team blog called BlendInsider . The BlendInsider blog will provide you with the types of content you found here…and hopefully much more! This blog will be kept around for archival purposes, but no new content will be added. See you all “ on the Inside...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 Themed Videos

2010-11-12T01:11:40Z

As you can imagine, shortly after a major release like we had, most of us shift our focus slightly towards talking about and sharing how to use some of the cool new features we released. In this first of a two-part series, I hope to make up for the long period of inactivity on this blog by sharing two Windows Phone focused videos that Unni, Billy, and I recorded for Channel 9. Overview of Expression Blend for Windows Phone 7 The first video on this list is one that walks you through, at a breakneck...(read more)

Windows Phone Developer Tools Released!

2010-09-16T17:28:16Z

Today, we have released the final version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools. You can download it below:First, download everything you need below: Windows Phone Developer Tools This installer will automatically install free, phone-flavored versions of Expression Blend, Visual Studio 2010, and XNA Game Studio. If you already have Expression Blend 4 installed, unlike earlier releases, running this installer will update your existing version of Expression Blend 4 and give you the ability to create...(read more)

Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta Released

2010-07-12T16:30:00Z

It’s been a while since we released an update for those of you working on Windows Phone 7 projects! Well, wait no more! Today we’ve released an updated version of Expression Blend that supports all of the latest changes made to the Windows Phone 7 runtime along with some cool new features. First, download everything you need below: Windows Phone Developer Tools (Beta) As you can see, you no longer need to download and install Expression Blend separately. You can just run the single Windows Phone...(read more)

Expression Blend Sessions from TechEd

2010-06-21T05:31:49Z

A few weeks ago, a couple of Expression Blend team members presented at the TechEd conference held in New Orleans this year! You can view those sessions given by Unni/Alan and Dave below: You can browse through all of the sessions by clicking here . Cheers, Kirupa =)...(read more)

Check Out The New Pattern (XAML+CS) Library!

2010-06-16T18:53:54Z

Creating great looking and functioning applications is tough. It requires having a good eye for design, but it also requires some technical knowledge about how to make the design functional. As you can probably guess, it is our goal to help you use Expression Blend, Visual Studio, and our related tools to create those great applications. We spend a great deal of time adding new features and making existing features better to help you do just that. Making improvements to the applications is only one...(read more)

Expression Studio 4 Launches

2010-06-07T18:09:33Z

Today at Internet Week in NYC, we announced the availability of Expression Studio 4 . You can download the trial of Expression Studio 4 Ultimate that includes Expression Blend 4 and SketchFlow by clicking below: Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Keep watching this blog for more news, updates, and in-depth looks at some of the new features that we’ve introduced. Until then, here are some related links: Microsoft Expression home page Christian Schormann’s blog Soma’s Favorite Expression Studio 4 Features...(read more)

Creating a Carousel with the PathListBoxUtils Sample

2010-06-07T15:00:00Z

While the PathListBox control provides an easy way to lay out items along a path, creating a carousel control that appears 3 dimensional and has smooth scrolling requires additional functionality that we did not have time to do in Expression Blend 4. I’ve created the PathListBoxUtils sample available on CodePlex to provide the tools that make creating a carousel like the one shown below very easy: Visit the Carousel tutorial to see how to create this example, and you can view all PathListBoxUtils...(read more)

Control Storyboards Easily using Behaviors

2010-05-25T18:17:30Z

It’s been a while since the last article where I promised to write about all of the behaviors that ship with Expression Blend in greater detail. I’ll try to be more prompt in the future. Today, let’s look at the ControlStoryboardAction and the StoryboardCompletedTrigger. Storyboards are one of the primary ways you create animations in Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone using Expression Blend. Creating a storyboard is fairly easy, but actually using a storyboard such as having it play is not. To...(read more)

How to add mockup controls to your Expression Blend library

2010-05-13T18:38:16Z

In Expression Blend 4, one of the new samples we added is called MockupDemonstration. If you haven’t had a chance to use it yet, you can open MockupDemonstration from the Welcome screen, which is available when you first start Expression Blend or when you click Help and then click Welcome Screen. In the Welcome screen, click Samples, and then click MockupDemonstration: As you can tell quickly from exploring this sample, this sample contains a handful of controls designed to help you create prototypes...(read more)

Updated Components for Windows Phone 7 Development

2010-04-29T17:45:00Z

At MIX, we released an early preview of our support for building applications for Windows Phone 7 that only ran on a pre-release version of the .NET Framework. If you have been holding off on upgrading to the latest versions of Expression Blend, Visual Studio, or .NET 4, wait no more! Today, we (along with the Windows Phone team) are releasing an update to the components we released last month to work on the final version of .NET Framework 4. Download everything you need below: ...(read more)

Minor Update to The Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate

2010-04-27T01:46:12Z

As most of you know, last week we released the release candidate version of Expression Blend 4. Shortly after many of you had a chance to play with it, some of you reported that Expression Blend crashes during launch. If you are one of those people whose Expression Blend crashes after launch, please download this minor revision of the release candidate we released last week: Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate (Updated) If you aren’t having any problems launching Blend, you do not have to upgrade...(read more)

Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate Available!

2010-04-16T16:48:43Z

Recently, the final versions of both Silverlight 4 and .NET 4 have been released! To coincide with this, we are releasing a release candidate version of Expression Blend 4 that you can use to target them: Download everything you need below: .NET Framework 4 Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate There are two things that you really need to know about this release. First, if you are doing Windows Phone development , you should not use the Expression Blend 4 RC. We will have an update for you soon with...(read more)

Expression Blend Sessions at MIX10

2010-03-29T20:52:54Z

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the sessions from MIX10 that showcased Expression Blend 4, the links below should help you out: Authoring for Windows Phone, Silverlight 4 and WPF 4 with Expression Blend by Christian Schormann and Pete Blois Dynamic Layout and Transitions for Microsoft Silverlight 4 with Microsoft Expression Blend by Kenny Young Prototyping Rich Microsoft Silverlight Applications with Expression SketchFlow by Chris Bernard This post only focuses on the...(read more)

Dynamic Layout and Transitions in Expression Blend 4

2010-03-16T21:07:00Z

Click here to watch Kenny’s MIX 2010 session that covers a lot of the topics that you see in this post. - Kirupa In Expression Blend, we’ve been thinking for a loooong time about how to make it ever easier to create great animated visual effects quickly on top of the Silverlight and WPF runtimes. We’ve been looking at large-scale animation needs since Blend 2 SP1 and steadily building features to address those needs, and we think we’ve reached critical mass. With Blend 4, we have...(read more)

Expression Blend 4 Beta and Information on Windows Phone Development

2010-03-15T18:24:56Z

As many of you know, today was the first day of MIX - Microsoft’s annual conference for designers and developers. Just like previous years, there has been a lot of great news coming out of the conference. The two big things we announced are Expression Blend 4 Beta and an add-in to Expression Blend that gives you the ability to build applications for the Windows Phone. Download everything you need below (*updated for RTM): .NET Framework 4 Expression Blend 4 Windows Phone Development You will...(read more)

Switching Visual States Easily using GoToStateAction

2010-02-23T05:52:22Z

Over the next couple of weeks, it seems like a good idea to go over some of the behaviors we shipped as a part of Expression Blend 3. Many of you have mentioned that you would like to learn more about the stock behaviors we ship and how they are used, so this blog will be a good interim solution for that until we properly incorporate your feedback into our future product documentation. - Kirupa First up on our list is one of my favorite behaviors that we shipped, the GoToStateAction! What is it?...(read more)

Limited Time: 30% Discount on Expression Studio 3

2009-12-22T19:11:30Z

Hi everyone, For a limited time, there is a 30% discount on all Microsoft Expression 3 products (Microsoft Expression Studio + Expression Web, both full and upgrade versions) through the Microsoft Online Store for US-based customers: No promo code required at all – just go to the store and add to the shopping cart! Cheers, Kirupa...(read more)

Try to Define Visuals in XAML

2009-11-25T02:17:30Z

Ok, pop-quiz time. Below, you will find two screenshots I took from two different applications: [ Screenshot 1 ] [ Screenshot 2 ] Can you tell what is different between those two images? If you said that the button in the second image seems a few pixels off from the image on the top (or something similar), you are wrong. The UI depicted in both of the screenshots is exactly the same. Yes, it was a trick question. While both applications look almost the same when run, let’s look at both of these applications...(read more)

Download Expression Blend Preview for .NET 4

2009-11-18T19:30:30Z

Today at PDC, we made a few announcements that would be of interest to you! First, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of the Silverlight 4 Beta . This version of Silverlight contains some cool new features that many of you have asked for, so read the What’s New document to get an overview of some of the new features. To coincide with the release of Silverlight 4 Beta today and the release of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 a short while ago, we are making a version of Expression Blend available that...(read more)

Working with Layout when DataContexts are Involved

2009-11-16T18:28:50Z

Hi everyone, When using Expression Blend, a common task you probably engage in is working with layout. Tasks I commonly associate with “working with layout” involve moving things around, rearranging the order of elements, ensuring everything flows when resized, changing your layout container, etc. For the most part, the changes you make to the layout of your application are pretty harmless…except when it involves DataContexts. In a nutshell, data contexts allow you to specify the data that elements...(read more)

Simple Cartoon Animation using Visual States

2009-11-10T20:13:03Z

One of the goals of Silverlight’s Visual State Manager technology is to let you do quite a bit of control customization without needing to use Blend’s Timeline, nor even having to know what a Storyboard is! Feel free to test-drive the Silverlight Button below, and then read on for a run-down of how easily it can be built. I started out with some vectors (Paths) depicting the face in its normal resting state. Then I used the Tools > Make Into Control command to make the artwork into a template...(read more)

Storyboards, Visual States and SketchFlow Animations

2009-10-13T17:41:56Z

What are these things – are they different ways of doing the same task? When would I use one in preference to another? Do they all work in all project types? This post will try to answer those questions by describing the animation and control customization tools that are available to you in Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow, and discussing what jobs each tool is meant to do. I’ll be classifying project types along two independent axes: WPF or Silverlight, and Blend or SketchFlow. In the first release...(read more)

Visual State Manager tips for design and authoring

2009-10-03T05:34:00Z

As you probably know, Silverlight and WPF have a runtime piece called the Visual State Manager (or VSM for short). As I’ll describe in this post, VSM and the Expression Blend tooling support for VSM lend a nice clean mental model to the business of visual states and visual state changes for both custom controls and UserControls. Although chronologically the story begins with the control author, I’ll talk about that aspect later in this post simply because there are more people in the world concerned...(read more)

Expression Blend 3 Survey- Win a free zune HD!!!

2009-09-16T02:34:41Z

Hello! The Expression Blend team is currently planning features for future versions of Expression Blend. We encourage everyone to take our Blend 3 Survey and send us your feedback. All eligible participants will be able to enter a drawing to win a FREE Zune HD ! As the winner you will be able to customize your own 32GB Zune HD (color and pattern). The deadline for submitting a survey response is October 5th, 2009 @ 11:59pm. The winner will be announced on October 9th, 2009. Click here to complete...(read more)