Blend for Developers Course Now Available!
If you're a XAML developer and have proudly stated that you hand-code all your markup, it’s time to learn how to be more productive. I’ve authored a new course for PluralSight. If you have a subscription, you can view it my new “Blend for Developers” course now:
Hope you enjoy the course!
Why Declarative UIs Are Important
Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/declarativeui.zip
If you're building Internet applications, you've probably been bombarded with lots of new technologies the last few years: Silverlight, Flex, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, etc. While all of these technologies have their use-cases, many of them are pointing to something that is new and important.
My SketchFlow .NET Rocks TV Episode is up (DNR-TV)
Url: http://dnrtv.com/default.aspx?ShowID=148
I am excited to announce that my new DNR-TV episode is up at .NET Rocks. Carl and I visited while we were both at DevTeach to show off Blend's new SketchFlow functionality. If you have time, give it a spin!
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Back from DevLink 2009!
I had a great time at DevLink this year. Met up with lots of great heartland folks and had some really interesting conversations (about Ruby and F# specifically). If you missed DevLink this year, you missed a great conference. John Keller and company put on a great show (for only $100 conference fee). The .NET Rocks panel at the end of the three days capped off a great few days in Nashville.
Where is the Blend SDK?
In my earlier blog entry, I mentioned the Blend SDK that is shipping with Blend 3 RC. For those of you who won't have access to Blend, the SDK is supposed to be available to you. But not quite yet.
Blend and Visual Studio - Why Two Tools?
I am here at DevTeach and having a great time. I got in a discussion with several of the speakers about the common complaint of some Silverlight/WPF folks that they want Blend to be in Visual Studio; or why Cider has always been disabled by most dev's.
Blend Container Editing
UPDATE: The client doesn't mind that I mention them so I'll tell you that its the great people at SchoolMaster. Siebrand Dijkstra and his crew are doing some interesting things with Silverlight.
I love teaching the Silverlight Tour as pretty much every class I teach I learn something new. I get used to certain features of Blend that do what I need but because of some bugs, I have gotten too good at hand-editing my XAML. In my current class (a private class for a Dutch software company), one of their very bright engineers showed me this trick:
Microsoft Won't Fix Simple Silverlight-Expression Bug? (UPDATED)
Url: http://connect.microsoft.com/Expression/feedbac...
The feedback system that Microsoft uses seems broken. It works well in letting us know what they are doing, but the MS team never seems to tell us why they aren't going to fix something. Its really frustrating to spend the time to try and alert them to a problem and to feel brushed off.
Updated Expression Blend v2.0 August Preview
Url: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx...
There is an updated build of Expression Blend's August Preview. For some users it complains that wants a CD key and has an expiration date soon (mine is at seven days). It was supposed to work without a CD key and it looks like they've fixed it. Tim Heuer mentioned the new build so if you're having the problem, please download this new version
WPF/E Item Template for Expression Blend
Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/WPFEBlendTempla...
I've created a simple template for creating a new WPF/E template for Blend. Simply download the .zip file and extract it your Blend directory (usually c:\program files\microsoft expression\blend 1.0\). Once you do that you can "Add New Item..." and add a WPF/E Asset like so:
Expression Blend and Web Now in MSDN Subscription
Url: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/04/...
I've blogged about how short-sighted it seemed that the Expression tools were not going to be available to MSDN Subscribers. I am glad to report that they have come to their senses! I think it is a great comprimise to include Blend and Web in MSDN. Expression Design and Video will still require additional licensing outside of MSDN, but they are less developer tools anyway.
Expression and MSDN Subscriptions
Url: http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en...
While I like the Expression Studio toolset I am dismayed that these tools will not be available for most developers without the extra expense. It seems at this point that Expression Studio will *NOT* be available as part of MSDN Subscriptions, but instead will require separate purchase options. It would seem to me that Expression would widen the MSDN subscription base to include designers in organizations and improve early adoption of the tools as it would get them in people's hands faster.
Codename "WPF/E" and Expression Toolset
Url: http://microsoft.com/expression
For me, one of the compelling "WPF/E" stories is the toolset. Like WPF, the Expression toolset is meant to fully support "WPF/E". Currently the new Expression Design (was Expression Designer) support export to "WPF/E" XAML. Expression Blend at this time doesn't support "WPF/E" natively but with a little coaxing I have demos that show it working that i'll be showing off soon.
