12

Microsoft Expression Blend

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

  • Navigating the Blend user interface
  • Creating and styling simple forms in Blend
  • Managing and editing themes and resources
  • Creating Silverlight animations with storyboards
  • Setting up and previewing data bindings

Microsoft Expression Blend (or simply Blend) is a visual editor for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight user interfaces. Although Visual Studio 2010 comes with a serviceable visual editor for WPF and Silverlight, Blend has always been a couple of steps ahead for visual design.

Blend is part of Microsoft's Expression suite of media products, introduced in 2005. Expression currently has four product lines:

  • Expression Blend, which this chapter is about
  • Expression Media Encoder, for transcoding and publishing video
  • Expression Web, for designing HTML
  • Expression Design, for drawing and editing images and vector art

Some media companies might use all four of these products — for example, for hosting streaming video in a Silverlight video player in a web page with icons on the web page and in the Silverlight video player. However, all you need to build great-looking applications for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is Blend.

By now you should be familiar with some basic Silverlight and XAML concepts from previous chapters. In this chapter, we concentrate on how Blend can speed up the XAML creation process.

Get Beginning Windows® Phone 7 Application Development: Building Windows® Phone Applications Using Silverlight® and XNA® now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

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