Blend
Intro Often extensions for Expression Blend need to store some global variables. Why not use the mechanisms Blend itself offers? I’d like to show you how to add a custom options page to the options dialog. I’ve started the example project by creating a new C# WPF Custom Control Library project and naming it ExtendingBlendOptionsTutorial. The details on how to create a new Blend Extension can be found here. You need to make sure the Microsoft.Expression.Extens... and Microsoft.Expression.Framework...
Intro One of the new additions in Expression Blend 4 is the Silverlight Databound Application Project template. I use that often when starting a new MVVM project. The template creates View and ViewModel folders and provides a good starting point for Model-View-ViewModel applications. The only downside is that this template is only available in Expression Blend and not in Visual Studio 2010. I’ve exported the project to a Visual Studio template to be able to use it in VS2010 too. Download The template...
Since today XamlResource.com is officially in beta. Its purpose is to create a platform to find and share resources for Silverlight and WPF, resources in the form of Xaml. Have a look around and if you run into issues, please let us know at xaml@hotmail.nl. Beta 1: In Beta 1 only a few of the final categories are supported: Colors; Resources of type SolidColorBrush Gradients; Resources of type GradientBrush Color sets; 2 to 5 resources of type SolidColorBrush Vectors; Resources of type StreamGeometry...
Intro This is the first in a series of small articles about what is new in Silverlight 4 and Expression Blend 4. The series is build around a open source demo application SilverAmp which is available on http://SilverAmp.CodePlex.com. MVVM Project and Item Templates Expression Blend has got a new project template to get started with a Model-View-ViewModel project easily. The template provides you with a View and a ViewModel bound together. It also adds the ViewModel to the SampleData of your project....
Event On June 7th Expression Studio 4 will be launched at the Internet Week in New York. One day later, on June 8th, the Dutch Silverlight and Expression User Group SIXIN organizes the Dutch Community Launch in collaboration with Microsoft and Centric at Centric's office in IJsselstein. To celebrate the 4 Expression release we have two interesting speakers. In addition, we give three packages Expression Studio and more great gifts away. Program The preliminary program for the evening is as follows:...
Last Tuesday the Software Developers Network – SDN organized another SDE. I’ve had the opportunity to present a session about Silverlight 4. I talked about lots of new features in Silverlight 4 and Expression Blend 4, focused on the Out-Of-Browser features. The slides of my presentation can be downloaded here. In my presentation I demonstrated a couple of features from my new pet project “SilverAmp”. This project is based on the legendary WinAmp, but made entirely in Silverlight. I use it to try...
.Last time I showed you how to get started building extensions for Expression Blend. Lets build a useful extension this time and go a bit deeper into Blend. Source of project => here Compiled dll => here (extract into /extensions folder of Expression Blend) The Extension When working on large Xaml files in Blend it’s often hard to find a specific control in the "Objects and Timeline Pane”. An extension that searches the active document and presents all elements that satisfy the query would...
Introduction Although it was possible to write extensions for Expression Blend and Expression Design, it wasn’t very easy and out of the box only one addin could be used. With Expression Blend 4 it is possible to write extensions using MEF, the Managed Extensibility Framework. Until today there’s no documentation on how to build these extensions, so look thru the code with Reflector is something you’ll have to do very often. Because Blend and Design are build using WPF searching the visual tree with...
StarterKits for Silverlight and the Expression Tools Lately I’ve seen some tweets passing by with links to various StarterKits. I’ve decided to "Bing” around a little and find out what these people were talking about. There are quite a few StarterKits available on various topics. I’ve listed a few below, old and new ones, that I find relevant to my fields of interest: Silverlight and the Expression Blend, Design and Web. Building a Zune Website with Expression Blend 3 StarterKit In this lab you will...
A few months ago I received an email from Rob Houweling explaining his ideas for a new Dutch usergroup, focused on Silverlight, Expression Design and Expression Blend. I’ve had been playing with the idea of a Silverlight usergroup myself at the time, so I didn’t have to think very long about joining. After meeting and numerous emails between six silverlight enthusiasts(Rob Houweling, Mark Monster, Koen Zwikstra, Antoni Dol, Eric van den Hoek and me, Timmy Kokke) the plans are worked out and it’s...
When working on some projects and articles in Expression Blend 3 I noticed a few differences with Blend 2 right away. Here are 9 improvements and new features I really like or enjoy having now. 1. Expression Blend now shows the size of your controls even when the width and height are set to Auto: 2. The assets are placed in a panel now. Although the “old” way of working with asses is still available, this new panel can be left open. Beside that, the assets are grouped in different ways in a tree,...
Below is a list of downloads for Silverlight 3. It includes all necessary downloads together. The majority are new updates and releases since the Silverlight 3 release. A few are older releases but should work with Silverlight 3. I’ll try to keep the list up to date when new releases follow. If you know a tool, library or framework for Silverlight that isn’t on the list, please let now by commenting, mailing or thru twitter. Development/Design Silverlight 3 RTW (3.0.40818.0) Microsoft® Silverlight™...
Introduction Today I would like to show you how to style a TreeView control in Silverlight 3 using Expression Blend 3. The TreeView is a control to visualize hierarchical data structures. If you haven’t got Silverlight 3 and Blend 3, you can find all downloads for Silverlight 3 and Blend 3 here. The TreeView control is available in WPF natively and styling is only a small bit different than in Silverlight. I try to explain one way of doing this and there are others. If you have any questions what...
I ran into this series of videos when exploring Microsoft Showcase this morning. If you’re just starting with Expression Blend or if are more experienced, these sessions can provide you with much useful information. There are 7 part, all listed below. If you want to learn more about the Expression Products or any other Microsoft product, just browse and Bing around Microsoft Showcase. Microsoft Expression Blend Essentials (1/7): Projects and Hierarchies Microsoft Expression Blend Essentials (2/7):...
The Bubble Chart is part of the Silverlight toolkit and is available for Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 at http://silverlight.codeplex... This chart uses the size of the “bubbles” to display more data. For this article I used the Silverlight 3 version of the toolkit and the newly released Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3. Creating the Chart Start by creating a new Silverlight 3 project in Expression Blend. Add a reference to the Silverlight toolkit by going to Project in the menu and click...