July 22nd, 2009 — Expression Blend, Expression Design, Silverlight, WPF, XAML
The Expression Studio 3 Trial is now available for download. The full version which costs $599 (or $349 upgrade) is available for preorder.
Expression Studio 3 includes:
March 27th, 2009 — Expression Blend, MIX09, Silverlight, WPF
Wow, it seems like the web is a buzz about Blend 3 ever since I got back from MIX09. It’s great to see that the Silverlight community has a good head of steam leading up to the release of Silverlight 3.
Here’s a quick roundup of news, tips and tricks that I’ve happened upon this week.
Tutorials
Tips & Tricks
News
March 18th, 2009 — Expression Blend, MIX09, Silverlight
I really wish I had the energy to write a thoughtful piece about MIX09. But to be honest, it’s been more of a whirlwind than I had anticipated. After a 5 hour flight from Boston put us in Las Vegas at 1:30am, there was a mixup with my room. As it turned out, the first two rooms that I was assigned were already occupied. Of course I didn’t find this out until I walked into each one. It did teach me that people don’t appreciate strangers walking into their hotel rooms at 2:00 am though. Oops.
On the upside, after 2 return trips to the front desk I was upgraded to a pimp suite on the 32nd floor. As I’m writing this I’m sitting in the living room of a 4 room suite with 3 HD TV’s, 3 sinks, 2 bathrooms a Jacuzzi and full bar. Life is good.
One thing I can say is that the most impressive part of day was the keynote piece about SketchFlow in Expression Blend 3. I really can’t wait to get back to the office and start working with it.
Here are some random photos from the day, and a gratuitous shot of the suite. More later.
March 18th, 2009 — Expression Blend, MIX09
Wow. I can’t wait to start prototyping with SketchFlow and SketchFlow Player in Expression Blend 3.
February 18th, 2009 — Expression Blend, Silverlight, WPF
As developers we quickly forget how confusing it can be when trying to get up to speed on a new platform. That initial dive in is the hardest part. Not because the the technology is difficult, but because there are very few beginner tutorials. It seems like the majority of information on the web will be geared toward the advanced user when all you need is for someone to walk you through the basics.
That’s why I like to see these tutorials like Adding Items to a Listbox using Blend from Kirupa. He does a great job of structuring the tutorial with a clear goal lots of screen shots.
The only thing I think he could add is the source for download. I know it seems silly to post the source for a list box, but for someone who is completely new to Silverlight it would be helpful.
January 15th, 2009 — Expression Blend, Flash, Silverlight
Sothink Quicker for Silverlight is a very Adobe Flash like application for creating animations that can be output to Silverlight. I have no idea what the output looks like but they do have some demos on their website.
They offer a free version and a full version for $39.95.
December 10th, 2008 — Expression Blend, Flash, Flex, Silverlight, WPF, XAML
For me, one of the most difficult aspects of making the jump from Flash to Silverlight/WPF was finding simple, to the point, tutorials to work from.
There are a few great resources out there now but at the time there was little information available, and what was out there assumed you already know a good deal about C# and .NET.
This made it very frustrating to get going because although I was proficient in AS2, I never really made the transition to AS3 before I dove into WPF and C#. Things that I could code up in AS2 in a matter of minutes became stumbling blocks along the way.
Recently a coworker let me borrow the book Foundation Expression Blend 2 by Victor Gaudioso.
If you’re new to WPF, or a Flash Developer making the difficult transition from ActionScript to XAML/C# this book will give you a great head start. Unlike some other books on the subject this one assumes little about your knowledge of WPF and C# and has a lot of simple tutorials that walk you through projects from end to end.
It seems like a lot books in this space are either written for developers or designers. This one hits that sweet spot in the middle and appeals to the technical designer, which is where a lot of Flash developers fall.
If I had found this when I was getting started it would have saved me a lot of time getting up to speed.
November 25th, 2008 — Expression Blend, Expression Design, Silverlight, WPF
I just stumbled upon Justin Angel’s blog. He has some of the most thorough and easy to understand WPF/Silverlight/Expression tutorials I’ve seen. Nice work.
November 18th, 2008 — Expression Blend
Douglas Olson and Peter Blois give a nice presentation on the WPF/Silverlight workflow with Expression Blend.
November 13th, 2008 — Expression Blend
I was reading the article ‘Common Misconceptions that New Designers have with Expression Blend‘ by Don Burnett this morning. The article has a lot of great info, but one very interesting nugget that I didn’t know is that you can now add intellisense to Expression Blend.
The download is available here:
IntelliSense For Expression Blend
These are Don’s install instructions:
- Extract the contents of installation archive in your Blend 2.0 sp1 installation folder (typically %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Expression\Blend 2.0)
- Run Blend from the Blend.bat file that was extracted into Blend’s installation folder. (The only way to run an add-in in Blend is to use a command line argument: -addin:path_to_the_addin - in this case -addin:Addins\Expression.Blend.IntelliSense.dll.
