Expression Blend

Expression Blend 2 August Preview available

DougC — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:34:00 GMT

This week Microsoft unveiled the August Preview of Expression Blend 2. Version 2 of Expression Blend enables users to create Silverlight applications. In addition, the Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate is also available for download.

Download the Expression Blend 2 August Preview here: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/download.aspx?key=blend2preview

Download the Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate here: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/downloads.aspx

Expression Blend and Studio now RTM, available soon...

DougC — Tue, 01 May 2007 06:19:00 GMT

At Mix07 today, Microsoft announced that Expression Blend has gone RTM. Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for the software and it will soon be available for purchase in stores. The estimated retail price will be $499 (although the Amazon.com price is showing $459).

Expression Blend will also be available soon in the Expression Studio package which also includes Expression Web, Design and Media and has an ERP of $599. A quick check at Amazon.com shows that they are selling it for $559 and it will be available on March 21st. According to Microsoft's website, Expression Studio also includes Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, (although I don't see any mention of Visual studio on Amazon's page for Expression Studio).

Also available for download is the first preview of Expression Blend 2. This version can create Silverlight-based applications. The download is available here

Several interesting Expression and Silverlight webcasts are now available on Microsoft's Expression website

Expression Blend Release Candidate Available

DougC — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 04:28:00 GMT

A Release Candidate for Microsoft Expression Blend is now available. This version is the latest release of Expression Blend which is Microsoft's new design tool that can create applications that take advantage of the .NET Framework 3.0 and the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Blend uses XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) which can deliver impressive looking applications for PCs with the .NET Framework 3.0 installed. To run the .NET Framework 3.0 and these applications, the PC must be running Vista or WinXP with SP2.

The Expression Blend RC comes with several Sample applications that show off the capabilities of the design tool. One of these sample applications is "Grand Piano" which is a nice looking and sounding virtual piano. It has the capability of recording your tune and saving it to a file which can be opened and played back later. Unfortunately, the piano only has 12 functional keys, but the application is still impressive with it's graphics and sound.

Other noteworthy samples that come with Expression Blend are "Animation Studio" which is a program which can amimate your drawings and "Color Swatch" which is an interactive application which allows a user to decorate a room by choosing the color of an item and immediately seeing the results.

The final release of Expression Blend is still expected in the second quarter of this year. The Expression Blend RC is available from Microsoft here.

Animation Studio

Grand Piano

Color Swatch

Expression Blend Beta 2 Now Available

DougC — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:01:00 GMT

This week Microsoft released a newer version of Expression Blend. The Beta 2 version is now available for download here. Some of the changes for this version include:

You can now instantiate resources from the Resources panel. For example, you can drag and drop a button style onto the artboard and create a button out of it instead of creating a button and applying it as a separate task.
You can see inner exceptions when an exception happens on the design surface, allowing you to see more details about the cause of an exception.
You now get font previews in the Text category of the Properties panel which makes it easier to choose your font.
After adding an event handler, the XAML file is now automatically saved for you.
Configuring value editors has been improved. For example, you'll find editing BitmapEffects or adding items to an ItemsControl such as ContextMenu are now much easier to do.