To create a Silverlight application and host it in a custom website, you could use the following steps: a) Create a Silverlight project in Blend, and test it. We assume that you are now ready to publish the application on a website. b) Open the solution...

Expression Blend 4 has support for authoring custom project and item templates, similar to Visual Studio. However, our support is a strict subset of what Visual Studio supports, and a few changes are necessary to the .vstemplate file to have the projects...

For Blend 4, we have added a new extension point to our Asset library - ToolboxExampleAttribute. Like most of our other attributes Consider this scenario (which we ran into as we were adding new content into our SDK - the various shapes like Star, Arc...

With Blend 4, we have made a number of significant changes to how we generate XAML, primarily with the aim of generating more compact XAML. You will find a couple of these interesting: a) DoubleAnimation v/s DoubleAnimationUsingKeyframes In Blend 3, rotating...

Blend 3 brings to the table really sophisticated support for sample data, enabiling better designability of your applications. In my previous post , I demonstrated how designers could leverage this feature to prototype data connected applications inside...

Here is a collection of a few of the blog posts I came across around the new databinding features in Blend 3. Hope you find them useful! Sample data http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/06/17/blend-3-great-feature-1-sample-data.aspx http://silverzine...

If you do run into a situation where the Blend flyout menus appear on the left instead of the right as shown below, the Tablet PC Settings panel is a good place to check.

While Blend 3 has a number of stellar features that I am sure everyone reading this blog has heard about (buzz words include SketchFlow, behaviors, sample data support, Illustrator and Photoshop import, TFS support, and many more), we really devoted a...

For Blend 3, we have completely re-designed the Asset Library. Here are some of the highlights: a) Categorization for various assets makes discoverability easier. b) Searchability allows for quick location of an asset across categories like Controls...

The last few weeks (or months) have been really hectic! We finally finished all the features that we wanted to add to Blend 3, and are now actively fixing all the feedback (read bugs and crashes :)) that you have been reporting to us, as well as making...

A number of people have sought more clarity around how Blend and resources references work inside WPF projects. Hope the following FAQs would help with some of your questions. a) Should I use Static or Dynamic resource lookup? Blend def. plays better...

A new extension point we have added to Blend 3 (based on very popular demand) can be seen put to good use with the Silverlight Chart control - we call it the AlternateContentProperty attribute. Annotating the properties of a control with this attribute...

Based on popular demand, here is a quick sample (WPF only though it would be very easy to port this as-is to Silverlight - currently busy with Blend 3 work and all the cool newer features we are adding to Blend 3) that will allow you to get started on...

Writing a design time experience for a Silverlight control can be a bit intimidating (the experience for WPF controls remains unchanged from Blend 2 - just that you now have a ton more extensibility points - unless you wanted to re-use the same design...

Blend 3 adds really cool support for the DataGrid control (for both Silverlight 3 and WPF Toolkit ). Here is a quick demo to help you get started. Enjoy! Create a new Silverlight 3 application Search and instantiate the DataGrid control from...

To help you walk thru some of support we have added for sample data inside Blend 3, I wrote a hands-on-lab that takes you thru the basic experience of building a simple master/detail visualization. While there are a lot more scenarios that are possible...

I am sure you must have heard - Expression Blend 3 Preview is here ! And I am back after a 2 year break from writing on this blog - if you were to use the product, you will realize what kept us busy :). If I were to list the new features in Blend 3...

Based on popular customer feedback, we have added a number of new extensibility points in Blend 3 (sorry, no support for plugins, yet, but who needs an officially supported extensibility model anyway ? :) ) Over the next few weeks, I will provide more...

Expression Blend 3 Preview adds support for integration with Team Foundation Server, one of our top feature requests. Some examples of the various integration points: a) Saving a file automatically checks it out b) Adding a new UserControl or assets to...

With Expression Blend RC1 (if you have not gotten that yet, you should – there are some very cool samples in there – get it here ), we “unknowingly” enabled a few scenarios that are cool. For our v1, we really wanted to support these scenarios using a...

We listened to your feedback and worked a large number of new features to help you become more productive + improved a lot on our old set of features. Explaining all the new work would probably be too much for a blog post, but I will try to highlight...

It took a while, but we finally managed to get it done. Previously code-named "Sparkle", then named "Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer", we finally settled for "Microsoft Expression Blend". There is more to it than just the new name - download...

Finally, I got some time to zip and upload some files! XPGadgets XMessenger

The other weekend, I got some spare time to see how I could go in re-creating the sidebar experience that will ship with Window Vista on XP. I was amazed at how far I could get using Expression Interactive Designer. Here is the current status of my effort...

We just published a new build of Expression Interactive Designer targeting Beta2 of WinFX and Windows Vista. Please download it from here . We look forward to your feedback.