WPF/Silverlight: Installed Blend V2 September CTP

Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Diary of a Code Trotter

<< Free WiFi at Starbucks in Zurich Oerlikon | Home | Blend: Canvas mode vs Grid mode >>

WPF/Silverlight: Installed Blend V2 September CTP

Update: I stand corrected, the "locks" are still here. See here! Thanks Christian!

My August CTP version of Expression Blend expired just as I was in Italy sitting with developers and doing some integration work, but thankfully when it expired, it gave me an additional 30 days, so I could continue to work. Once back in Switzerland, I downloaded the whole September CTP package and installed everything. It went smoothly, and I can now enjoy Blend 2 September CTP with quite a few cool new features. I especially like the Split view (XAML editor / Designer). The Vertex animation feature is really cool too, you can now move the points of a Path independantly from each other to let the whole figure move, for example like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on Friday, September 21, 2007 6:40 AM Technical stuff , .NET , WPF , Silverlight , Expression Blend | Back to top

Comments on this post: WPF/Silverlight: Installed Blend V2 September CTP

# re: WPF/Silverlight: Installed Blend V2 September CTP

Laurent,
We have not changed anything in grid layout between Blend 1 and 2. It sounds as if you have been using the grid in Canvas mode.

In Blend, there is a small icon in the upper left corner of the grid on the art board that lets you toggle the grid between grid and canvas mode. When you are in grid mode you get the row/colum locks and other adorners, when you are in canvas mode you don't.

You can also set which mode to use by default in the options dialog. When you moved to the Blend 2 Preview, your preference might not have transported over.

The reason we have the canvas mode was to made it easier for designers not experienced with layout panels to get started. Basically, in Canvas mode we try to do a meaningful re-layout on resize without you having to specify all the possible options the grid permits.

Regards,
CS

Left by Christian Schormann on Sep 21, 2007 11:53 AM

# re: WPF/Silverlight: Installed Blend V2 September CTP

Hi Christian,

Great, thanks for pointing this out. Since I first installed Blend last year, I have always used the Grid in Grid mode, and not in Canvas mode. For some reason, when I installed Blend 2 September CTP, I somehow unchecked the "Use grid layout mode" checkbox in the Options. I have no idea how that happened. It's great to have the small "locks" back :-)

I'll write a more detailed post about this later.

See you in October!
Laurent
PS: Do you sign "CS" because it looks like CSharp? :-)

Left by Laurent on Sep 21, 2007 8:15 PM

Comments have been closed on this topic.