An updated version of the Expression Design December CTP is now available that no longer expires at the beginning of 2007.   This should let you start testing again with hopefully a minimal interruption. The team appreciates all the great feedback we've been hearing and many of us have taken to reading the news groups daily in order to catch up on the latest issues.

You can download the updated CTP here:
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/expression-design/free-trial.mspx


 

Today we are also delighted to announce the availability of a new preview version of Expression Graphic Designer. This preview version is the January 2006 Community Technology Preview [1]

We would like to thank you for your enthusiastic support regarding our professional graphic design application, Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer (formerly code-named "Acrylic"). We look forward to your continued feedback.

Please note that you must complete a product registration to receive this download.

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/graphic_designer/gd_free_trial.aspx

Based on your feedback, we have published a new build of Expression Blend 2 August Preview that addresses two issues:

a) Expression Blend 2 August Preview will not require a license key to work. The software is designed to stop working on January 1st, 2008, no matter when you install it. If you had issues with the trial licenses expiring, you should un-install the previous August Preview build and install our refreshed bits.

b) You can create Silverlight 1.1 projects inside Expression Blend 2 August Preview again. This functionality was broken with the update to the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh bits.

You should un-install the previous August Preview build, before installing the refreshed bits. Instructions for downloading and installing the refreshed Expression Blend 2 August Preview build can be found here.

Thanks,
The Expression Blend team

In our latest release of Deep Zoom Composer, we removed a feature that all of you liked a lot. While I will detail this in the near future, I figure the following screenshots from a version of Deep Zoom Composer on my machine should give you an idea of what it is we brought back:

And of course, the grand finale:

If you notice carefully, you’ll spot some cool Deep Zoom enhancements we have added in Expression Blend 3 since our release at MIX as well.

Cheers!
Kirupa :)

Steve White, Technical Writer, EID

Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer (EID) is largely about creating and editing trees of user-interface elements. When you use the double-click gesture in the Library palette (View > Library) to create a new element, Interactive Designer needs to know into which container in the tree to put the new element. So we have this idea of the 'active' or 'activated' container which refers to an existing container which will become the parent of the new element. Only one container in the tree can be activated at any time. By the way, I use the term 'activated' because the container in question is in a particular state, ready to receive the new element. 'Active' implies the container is somehow going to do something whereas in fact its state is passive. Either term is ok to use and they refer to the same idea.

So, how do you set a container to be activated and how do you identify the currently activated container? I would recommend that you go to the element tree (in the Timeline palette - View > Timeline) and expand the tree until you find the container you want to activate. Then double-click the container and note that it now appears in both the element tree and on the artboard with a yellow highlighted border. It's the highlighted border which shows which container is activated.

Now, when you double-click an element type from the Library palette (View > Library), EID will create the new element and nest it as a child of the activated container. If the activated container is one which may have only one child, and that container already has a child, then your double-click-to-create gesture will replace the previous child (and all its children, if any). This is sometimes what you want, other times it may be an indication that the activated container was not the one you intended. Always check for the yellow highlighted border before double-clicking from the Library palette.

The other way to create a new element is to select the element type in the Library palette and then draw it onto the artboard. EID will place the new element as a child of the container most appropriate to the location in which you are drawing.

Download for free the first-ever Expression Web Designer CTP now via the Microsoft Expression Web site.

Also, you can discuss Expression Web Designer in the forums as well as send feedback or report a bug to help us make a better product!

For most practical scenarios, the controls that you create (and are instantiated by Blend on its design surface) are bound to data structures that are populated at run-time. Unfortunately, these result in an experience on the design surface that is not friendly to designers – for example, how can you figure out the optimal font size for rendering a label when you can’t visualize the typical value that the label would display?

Fortunately, Blend has a way to easily modify the behavior of controls when they are hosted inside the Blend design surface, as opposed to the actual application. This opens up a number of possibilities, including the ability to simulate data at design time. Let us use a simple example to describe how you can do this.

Consider that you are designing a form that visualizes stock data, with the actual data coming from a web-service.  The data structure that holds the data might look something like the following:

public class StockWidgetModel

      {

            private ObservableCollection<Quote> quoteList = new ObservableCollection<Quote>();

            public ObservableCollection<Quote> QuoteList

            {

                  get { return quoteList; }

            }

            public StockWidgetModel()

            {

                  if (IsInDesignMode())

                  {

                        this.createDummyData();

                  }

            }

            private bool IsInDesignMode()

{

return (bool)DependencyPropertyDescriptor.FromProperty(DesignerProperties.IsInDesignModeProperty, typeof(FrameworkElement)).Metadata.DefaultValue;

}

            private void createDummyData()

            {

                  this.QuoteList.Add(new Quote("MSFT", "Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA 98052", 25.4, +1.2));

            }

            private void RefreshQuotes() { }

            public static Quote GetQuote(string symbol) { }

      }

The interesting bit is highlighted in Yellow. This function can be used to check, anywhere in your code, as to whether your control is running inside the Blend Design surface. In this case, we are conditionally executing some code that won’t execute in the actual running application to populate our Quotes data structure, so we could design the list box that is bound to this data structure better.

See this in action by downloading the sample here.

Unni

Hi everyone,

Thanks to all of you who attended the session Celso and I gave at MIX08. If you didn't get a chance to see us, you can view the session here. Besides describing how our Deep Zoom Composer was developed and styled, we spent the first half of the session working on a sample application called the FurnitureShowroom:

We've received numerous requests to provide the source files for FurnitureShowroom, so...here you go:

Download Sample

When you extract the above source files, there will be a folder called Database. Please move the Database folder to your C:\ drive so that the application knows where to get the data from. Make sure you also have the SQL Server 2005 support enabled. That is an installation option in Visual Studio, but you can also install the free SQL Server 2005 Express edition instead.

Cheers!
Kirupa

Because Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is based on the .NET Framework, you can customize the functionality of existing control types. You can start with a control defined in a WPF library, derive a new control type from it, and build that into a library of your own. You can draw a control onto the design surface of Expression Interactive Designer just as easily whether it is implemented in your own library or in a WPF library. In this tutorial you will extend the Button control to create an ImageButton control which has a Source property in addition to the standard Content property. You can then specify how the new Source property is to be used by the control by modifying the control's template.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/articles/525441.aspx

This is to announce that Karsten has a blog post (authored by Andrew Whiddet) on the subject of asynchronous data binding [1]. It's likely to be of interest to you if you're a software developer or you're a designer with a developer sensibility. It's relevant to our previous post about the AdventureWorks Product Photos [2] sample and tutorial which loads data from a database into a collection ready for data binding inside Expression Interactive Designer. Typically, data access is expensive in time, so a good pattern is to keep the user-interface responsive whilst the data loads in the background as the post discusses.

Mix 09 this year is going to be pretty interesting – especially if you are an Expression Blend aficionado. You can see the full session information for all Expression Sessions here: https://content.visitmix.com/2009/sessions/?categories=Expression

The following are just the Expression Blend sessions chosen from the above list:

Besides the speakers listed above, Lutz Roeder and I will be there as well. If you happen to stop by any of the above sessions, feel free to chat with any of us. We enjoy the company!

Cheers,
Kirupa :-)

Swing by Unni's blog [1] and check out his beautiful samples built with Expression Interactive Designer. Unni is a Program Manager with Expression.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/unnir/

Evgeny is back with a great blog post describing some cool features related to the new Sample Data feature we introduced in Expression Blend 3.

Visit his blog post to go read it: http://etvorun.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!6054141F335D00D3!130.entry

Cheers!
Kirupa :)

The July CTPs of Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer are now available. Both of these CTPs target the July CTP of .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly known as WinFX).

Download Expression Graphic Designer July 2006 CTP
Download Expression Interactive Designer July 2006 CTP

For more late-breaking changes in Expression Interactive Designer, please see the Readme.

Found a bug? Report it to us.

Have something to say about the CTPs? Join a discussion group.

We thought it was worth calling out this item as it may be an issue some of you encounter.

If you are trying to test build a project (Project | Test Project) immediately after installing WinFX and Expression Interactive Designer, but Expression Interactive Designer was never launched before, your build attempt might fail with the following message: “Error MC1000: Unknown build error”. If this occurs, you will need to close Expression Interactive Designer and launch it again.

Quite painless, hopefully, but worth knowing.

I figured you could all use a break from the tips and tricks my colleagues have been posting for the past few days! At one time, the Expression team was fortunate to have incredibly talented artist (illustrator, musician) Aaron Jasinski on board as a product designer. Among his contributions were the style guides which define the visual specifications of each part of the products' UI, the design of the Welcome Screen, teaming up with feature Program Managers on UI and user experience design, looking into the future of the Expression products, and generally making his office a cool and ambient place to be. To emphasize the last point, here are the shots of his whiteboard:

( larger version )

( larger version )

( larger version )

You can see more of his work at http://www.aaronjasinski.com.

Steve White

Today we are delighted to announce the availability of a preview version of Expression Interactive Designer. This preview version is the January 2006 Community Technology Preview and you can download it at the following URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=ed9f5fb2-4cfc-4d2c-9af8-580d644e3d1d&displaylang=en

Please note that you must complete a product registration to receive this download.

We have compiled a set of sample applications and tutorials specifically for this CTP and you can see the gallery of these samples over on the right of the blog. Look for the box titled 'Article Categories' and then click Samples and Tutorials Gallery - EID Jan 06 CTP to take you to the gallery (or just click the link given above).

In the same 'Article Categories' box is a link to the Readme file for the Jan 06 CTP which contains important late-breaking news and known issues - Readme File - EID Jan 06 CTP.

There are lots more resources about Expression on the Microsoft Expression web site.

If you enjoyed the previous Channel 9 video featuring the Expression Interactive Designer team then you'll want to check out the new video Robert Scoble hosted and posted today at the link below:

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=157843