Expression Blend and Design

Microsoft Expression News

Lori Dirks — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:19:00 GMT

We released important news today about the Expression family of products. Please visit the Expression Community site for details....(read more)

Say “Hello” to BlendInsider

kirupa — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:56:13 GMT

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...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 Themed Videos

kirupa — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 01:11:40 GMT

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...(read more)

Windows Phone Developer Tools Released!

kirupa — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:28:16 GMT

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...(read more)

Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta Released

kirupa — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:30:00 GMT

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...(read more)

Expression Blend Sessions from TechEd

kirupa — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 05:31:49 GMT

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...(read more)

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

kirupa — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:53:54 GMT

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...(read more)

Expression Studio 4 Launches

kirupa — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:09:33 GMT

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...(read more)

Creating a Carousel with the PathListBoxUtils Sample

kirupa — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:00:00 GMT

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....(read more)

Control Storyboards Easily using Behaviors

kirupa — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:17:30 GMT

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...(read more)

How to add mockup controls to your Expression Blend library

kirupa — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:38:16 GMT

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...(read more)

Updated Components for Windows Phone 7 Development

kirupa — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:45:00 GMT

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...(read more)

Minor Update to The Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate

kirupa — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:46:12 GMT

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...(read more)

Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate Available!

kirupa — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:48:43 GMT

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...(read more)

Expression Blend Sessions at MIX10

kirupa — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:52:54 GMT

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 ...(read more)

Dynamic Layout and Transitions in Expression Blend 4

kirupa — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:07:00 GMT

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...(read more)

Expression Blend 4 Beta and Information on Windows Phone Development

kirupa — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:24:56 GMT

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...(read more)

Switching Visual States Easily using GoToStateAction

kirupa — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:52:22 GMT

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...(read more)

Limited Time: 30% Discount on Expression Studio 3

kirupa — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:11:30 GMT

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...(read more)

Try to Define Visuals in XAML

kirupa — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:17:30 GMT

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...(read more)

Download Expression Blend Preview for .NET 4

kirupa — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:30:30 GMT

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...(read more)

Working with Layout when DataContexts are Involved

kirupa — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:28:50 GMT

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...(read more)

Simple Cartoon Animation using Visual States

kirupa — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:13:03 GMT

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...(read more)

Storyboards, Visual States and SketchFlow Animations

kirupa — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:41:56 GMT

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...(read more)

Visual State Manager tips for design and authoring

kirupa — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:34:00 GMT

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...(read more)