The team blog of the Expression Blend and Design products.http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/atom.xmlCommunity Server2009-07-23T15:48:31Zhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/24/try-to-define-visuals-in-xaml.aspx2009-11-25T02:17:30Z2009-11-25T02:17:30ZOk, 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...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/24/try-to-define-visuals-in-xaml.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9928339" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/18/download-expression-blend-preview-for-net-4.aspx2009-11-18T19:30:30Z2009-11-18T19:30:30ZToday 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...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/18/download-expression-blend-preview-for-net-4.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9924589" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/16/working-datacontexts-and-layout.aspx2009-11-16T18:28:50Z2009-11-16T18:28:50ZHi 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...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/16/working-datacontexts-and-layout.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9923074" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/10/simple-cartoon-animation-using-visual-states.aspx2009-11-10T20:13:03Z2009-11-10T20:13:03ZOne 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 &gt; Make Into Control command to make the artwork into a template...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/11/10/simple-cartoon-animation-using-visual-states.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9920396" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/10/13/storyboards-visual-states-and-sketchflow-animations.aspx2009-10-13T17:41:56Z2009-10-13T17:41:56ZWhat 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...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/10/13/storyboards-visual-states-and-sketchflow-animations.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9906737" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/10/02/visual-state-manager-tips-for-design-and-authoring.aspx2009-10-03T05:34:00Z2009-10-03T05:34:00ZAs 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...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/10/02/visual-state-manager-tips-for-design-and-authoring.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9902667" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/09/15/expression-blend-3-survey-win-a-free-zune-hd.aspx2009-09-16T02:34:41Z2009-09-16T02:34:41ZHello! 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 ! &#160; 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...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/09/15/expression-blend-3-survey-win-a-free-zune-hd.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9895612" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/09/09/silverlight-control-styling-tips-articles.aspx2009-09-10T02:58:00Z2009-09-10T02:58:00ZWe’ve published eleven new articles on the blog and they all contain information and tips that you’ll find useful when styling common Silverlight 3 controls. First there’s an article with some general tips: it discusses template binding, different ways of binding Content in your template, some of the smarts in the Make Into Control command, and some tips on visual states. Then there are ten articles focusing on specific commonly-used controls. For each of these specific articles the article format...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/09/09/silverlight-control-styling-tips-articles.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9893397" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/09/02/keyframe-marquee-selection-and-other-timeline-tips.aspx2009-09-02T23:35:10Z2009-09-02T23:35:10ZWith Blend 3 it’s now possible to draw a marquee (or lasso) around keyframes to select all the keyframes that fall within it. Hold down the CTRL key then drag out a marquee with the mouse pointer as shown below. You can even begin your drag operation when the mouse pointer is over a keyframe or an animation bar; so long as CTRL is pressed, this will not result in selecting and/or moving any keyframe or animation. If you ever used the time ruler area above the Timeline to move the yellow playhead...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/09/02/keyframe-marquee-selection-and-other-timeline-tips.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9890563" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/08/26/using-custom-value-editors-for-behaviors.aspx2009-08-27T01:05:45Z2009-08-27T01:05:45ZOk, Jeff Kelly is back with Part IV of his coverage on behaviors-related topics. This one talks about some of the built-in value editors we provide to make it easier for your users to use behaviors that you create - Kirupa In Expression Blend 3, we’ve provided a number of custom ValueEditors in the property inspector to enhance the usability of our standard Behavior set. As an added bonus, we’ve introduced some limited extensibility to allow third-party controls and behaviors to reuse a few of these....(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/08/26/using-custom-value-editors-for-behaviors.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9885990" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/08/24/blend-3-samples-deconstructed.aspx2009-08-24T22:16:47Z2009-08-24T22:16:47ZIn my previous post, I mentioned that most of the samples from previous versions of Expression Blend have been uploaded to our gallery. One thing that is common with all of the samples is that Celso Gomes had a hand in making them. Recently, Celso started deconstructing how many of the samples work at his site: http://www.nibblestutorials.net : Go check out Celso’s site if you are interested in learning more about how these samples work. Cheers! Kirupa :)...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/08/24/blend-3-samples-deconstructed.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9882895" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/08/18/all-expression-blend-samples-posted-to-the-expression-gallery.aspx2009-08-19T02:03:19Z2009-08-19T02:03:19ZHi everyone, As many of you probably already know, the Expression Community site is where you go to learn more about how to use Expression Blend. One of the big components of the Community site is the Expression Gallery where you can download and share all kinds of content with the rest of the world. I had some time recently, so I’ve uploaded many of the samples that have shipped with Expression Blend to our gallery: &#160; Just head over here and download them all. I’m not fully done uploading all...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/08/18/all-expression-blend-samples-posted-to-the-expression-gallery.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9874710" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/07/30/deep-zoom-composer-updated-to-fix-export-bug.aspx2009-07-31T01:29:11Z2009-07-31T01:29:11ZHi everyone, We have released an update to last week’s Deep Zoom Composer release to address a fairly serious bug related to the image paths we generate during export. You can download the latest version from the following location: Download Deep Zoom Composer As always, please uninstall all existing versions of Deep Zoom Composer before installing the new version. The export related bug we fixed has to do with image tiles not loading when you export using our custom templates. If you exported using...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/07/30/deep-zoom-composer-updated-to-fix-export-bug.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9853823" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/07/26/the-states-pane-and-wpf-controls.aspx2009-07-26T22:51:05Z2009-07-26T22:51:05ZLast October I described how to use the States pane in a WPF project with Blend 2 Service Pack 1 . Things are even simpler with Expression Blend 3 so in this post I’ll remind you how to use the States pane with WPF controls. As you may know, when you create a template for a Silverlight control, the States pane populates with States ready for you to select-and-design. This is because Silverlight controls are designed to work with States, and each Silverlight control advertises the States it works...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/07/26/the-states-pane-and-wpf-controls.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9849375" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/07/23/expression-blend-3-secrets-of-working-with-data.aspx2009-07-24T01:48:31Z2009-07-24T01:48:31ZEvgeny 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 :)...(<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/07/23/expression-blend-3-secrets-of-working-with-data.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9846865" width="1" height="1">xprbloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/members/xprblog.aspx