Expression Blend and Design

Like we mentioned earlier this week , new preview versions of Expression Blend 2.5 and Deep Zoom Composer

Like we mentioned earlier this week , new preview versions of Expression Blend 2.5 and Deep Zoom Composer

Unable to uninstall Blend 2.5 March preview, is there a link to download that package so I can try and get it uninstalled?

Thanks

Burl- would it be possible for you to send us an email (you can use peterbl at microsoft.com) with some more information about what you're seeing?

We haven't seen any issues with uninstalling and will probably need to investigate further.

Unfortunately the June Preview download overwrote the March Preview so we don't have a link available for that one.

This version of Deep Zoom Composer seems to export even worse than the first version. Images are not even close to being displayed in the position as composed in Composer. Arranging into a grid makes the pictures displah on top of each other. I hope a next version will be released soon!

Eric -  can you create a small repro and e-mail me your project files to kirupac[at]microsoft.com? I would be glad to take a look at it.

Thanks,

Kirupa :)

By now you know that Silverlight 2 Beta 2 was released Friday evening. There have been some great posts by several people piling up over the weekend on the changes, new features, features still missing, and much more. Here is a quick rundown of some links

I've recently written a piece on using Deep Zoom Composer to put a portfolio online for Computer Arts

Hi,

I installed SL 2 Beta 2, the Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008, and then tried to install the Blend 2.5 June Preview (over the top of the March Preview) and the installation makes it all the way through to an action called "Installing Licences", and then it rolls everything back, and the Preview Setup Wizard says that the installation ended prematurely.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Ian

It would be nice to have a way to convert an existing layout into

the new format. It's a little discouraging to spend some significant

time preparing  some layouts, only to have to do it all over again

when a new version comes out. Just a suggestion.

wwhite - I do apologize for the inconvenience this DZC update has caused you and others who had already invested a great deal of time using our earlier releases to create content.

Essentially, it came down to whether the benefit of moving to the new XML-based format would outweigh the inconvenience of no longer being able to use older projects. I (not speaking on behalf of the rest of the DZC/Live Labs team) still feel that it was the right step to take, and the changes we made were quite significant where providing a converter would not have been trivial.

Moving forward - we will not be making any more breaking changes to the image format, and if we do, we hope to make the transition more smooth.

Cheers!

Kirupa :)

After last week release of Silverlight 2 Beta 2, (SL2B2)  I collected a small step-by-step guide

Ian - are you running any sort of "virtualization layer" software?

Kirupa,

Do you mean am I running VMWare or Virtual PC or something like that? If so, then no, this is a standard Dell machine with Vista Ultimate installed, and the software I mentioned is all installed on the base machine OS, not a VM.

Ian

Have a few issues with the newest DeepZoomComposer:

* Crashes on a certain image (.tif) when going to the Export step. ArgumentException ("Value does not fall within the expected range.") in Mermaid.exe (CroppedBitmap). Re-saved he image in Paint.exe as png, and that worked. If re-saving as png in Office Picture Manager, crashes again. Also when re-saving as bmp in Paint.exe I also get a crash (different exceptions every time).

* Does not honor PNG output settings, always exports as jpg in folder dzc_output_images (but exports as png in folder dzc_output_files). However, it seems to work with the batch export.

* Generated Silverlight site (composite image) does not work well, pictures often stay fuzzy when zooming in, even though the tiles themselves were generated OK. This was much better in the previous version.

Karl

Karl - thanks for that feedback. We believe we have fix for all three issues. For issue 3, if you export as JPG, the issue should no longer be evident.

Ian - this isn't an issue that it seems like we haven't encountered, so I do apologize for continuing to ask diagnostic questions as opposed to giving you possible soutions. Are you able to install Blend 2.5 in Safe Mode?

Well, kurang lebih dalam 2 bulan ke depan gw akan magang jadi graphic designer plus plus (halah) di Microsoft

Kirupa,

Not sure I understand - the Windows Installer Service cannot be started in Safe Mode, so I am not sure how I would install Blend in Safe Mode.

Ian

Ian - I guess one alternative would be to uninstall your March 2008 Preview before attempting to install the June 2008 Preview.

Este add-on para Visual Studio 2008 le permite utilizar .NET para crear sitios web con Silverlight 2

One more issue I found:

Composer thinks the picture at this location is not a valid image:

http://www.h-schmidt.net/map/download/world_shaded_43k.jpg

However, other software I was using accepted the image.

Karl

Kirupa,

Have tried this - the June Preview still does not install. Is there no log of the installation process that could be used to debug this problem?

Ian

Ian - sure, try running the following command:

msiexec.exe -i Blend_en.msi -l*v Blend_en.log

Please e-mail that log file to kirupac[at]microsoft.com

Thanks,

Kirupa

When you export the images, why aren't they aligned as you aligned them in composer-mode? They get aligned all over the place? Bug or Feature?

由于在微软实习，而且从事的又是Silverlight开发

觉得还是有必要留下点东西的

本来写了一篇，但是由于怕公司不允许写技术博客，所以删除

但是后来在mentor那边了解到只要不写项目的内容就...

開発環境がないので、インストールすることにした。 ちなみに、家のPCのOSはWi...

I have seen the same issue Ian had experienced. I had reinstall Silvelight again, reboot etc to get Silverlight working. Now I am hesitant to install Blend although I would like to. Is the issue Ian was experiencing resolved or have you found a fix for it?

Hi Vandana,

What version of Blend are you trying to install? The issue with Ian's install was something different - it had to do with nuances of our licensing mechanism.

If you install our latest version, Blend 2 SP1 preview, and run into issues, please let me know and I can forward it to some colleagues who can help you.

Cheers!

Kirupa