Tool Support
In most of the examples in this appendix, the XAML I have shown is fairly small and straightforward. The reality is that most interesting XAML is much more complex than what I can show you in a simple code example. Hand-coding complex XAML can be difficult, but that is where tools come in.
There are several tools to help you work with Silverlight XAML:
The Expression Toolset (including Design and Blend)
Visual Studio (including the Silverlight JavaScript Application Project)
Third-party tools (e.g., Photoshop and Illustrator)
Expression Toolset
New to the Microsoft family of products is the Expression set of tools:
- Expression Design
An Adobe Illustrator-like tool for creating vector-based designs
- Expression Blend
A design tool that works directly against XAML and interoperates with developer-level tools (e.g., Visual Studio)
- Expression Web
A professional web design tool
- Expression Media
A multimedia asset management tool as well as a video/audio editing and transcoding tool
For the Silverlight developer, the three parts of Expression that are of most interest are Expression Design, Expression Media, and Expression Blend. Currently, Design and Media are compatible with Silverlight. A new version of Blend (Version 2) is also compatible with Silverlight. At the time of this writing, prerelease versions of Expression Media and Expression Blend Version 2 are available.[137]
Expression Design
You use Design to mix vector and raster (i.e., bitmap) designs together. Expression Design allows ...
Get Programming WPF, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
