What’s New in Expression Blend 3 Preview

With Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Preview, you can create Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications for the desktop and Microsoft Silverlight 3 applications for the web. Expression Blend 3 Preview is a major new release, taking the product in a number of new, important directions, such as on-the-fly sample data generation. We also added support for several Silverlight 3 features. Expression Blend 3 Preview is a step on a long journey towards tools that are meant to empower designers to participate in the process of software creation in deep, meaningful, and creative ways. Using Expression Blend 3 Preview, you, the designers, can make computers easier and more fun to use, and can delight customers with great applications and great content.

Design

Importing Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files

You can now use Expression Blend 3 Preview to import both Adobe PhotoShop (.psd) files and Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files directly into your projects, while retaining layers, shapes, text elements, and more for easy editing inside Expression Blend itself. Note: Adobe live effects, blend modes, and the symbol sprayer are not supported. When you import an Adobe file, Expression Blend 3 Preview will display a message to let you know if any features of the imported file are not supported, and what actions you can take.

Effects

Expression Blend 3 Preview introduces support for WPF and Silverlight graphic effects. Open the Asset Library, click the Effects tab, and drag an effect onto an object. You can modify properties of the effect in the Properties panel.

Gradient tool improvements

Expression Blend 3 Preview makes using the gradient tool even easier and more powerful than in earlier versions. You can now change the offset values of a gradient directly on an object that has a gradient applied to it. To change a stop position, you just drag the stop. To add a new stop, hold down the ALT key and then click the gradient adorner. You can also quickly redefine the gradient by dragging a new gradient adorner onto the artboard. When you double-click anywhere on the artboard, a color picker appears. You can use the color picker to change the color of the stop.

Layout operation improvements

Expression Blend 3 Preview introduces several improvements to layout operations. Moving objects with direct manipulation on the artboard is more consistent and predictable, alignment adorners are shown for more containers, layout properties and bindings are preserved when reparenting or grouping objects, and layout properties are no longer written to the XAML code-behind file unnecessarily.

Design-time annotations

Designers can now add visual bubble annotations (very similar to Microsoft Visio comments) to the artboard. These annotations are stored in the XAML file in the form of attached properties. They can be used to improve communication between team members. The annotations do not appear at runtime.

Skinning

Creating templates from artwork

You can use the modified Make Into Control menu command to select artwork on the artboard and to convert it into a skin (control template) for a control. From there, you can right-click objects and click Make Into Part to assign objects in your control to specific roles. For example, if you convert artwork to a Slider control template, you can then select one of the objects in your template and assign it to the role of the slider's HorizontalThumb. The Parts panel makes it easy to manage and create the parts required by a control template.

Improved support for VSM

Support for the Silverlight Visual State Manager (VSM) in Expression Blend 3 Preview has been improved with a revised user interface for the States panel. You can see more states for controls, regardless of whether those states were defined in your XAML originally, and the States panel displays a warning indicator when a property has been changed in more than one state group.

State pinning

You can now pin a preview of one state in a state group while modifying another state in a different state group.

Editing state transitions

You can select the storyboard for a state transition and modify it in the Objects and Timeline panel.

Drawing into state

When you select a state and draw a new element, the new element will be visible only in the selected state at runtime. This is called drawing into state.

Interactivity

XAML, C#, and Visual Basic Code Editing

Expression Blend 3 Preview improves on its XAML support by introducing time-saving features. With Expression Blend 3 Preview, you can modify C# and Visual Basic code files right inside the product. The code editor supports several features that you can use to increase your productivity when you modify code. These features include IntelliSense (syntax completion), auto-formatting, brace matching, function summary writing, event handler creation, and more.

Data

Using sample data

Expression Blend 3 Preview makes it easy to create and test data-connected applications without having access to live data. You can use the Data panel to generate sample data or import sample data from an XML file. Sample data is available to controls on the artboard at design time. You can extensively customize your sample data details, and you can easily switch between using sample data and using live data at run time. For more information, see Use the DataGrid control.

Data binding

Expression Blend 3 Preview also includes the following new data binding features:

• The ability to drag and drop items of data from the Data panel into the Objects and Timeline panel to create data bindings.


• The ability to bind the property of one object to a property of another object in Silverlight 3.


• Support for the DataGrid control in Silverlight 3 applications.


• Support for Master/Detail scenarios by using the list view and details view of the Data panel.


• Improved support for binding to a data context.


• The ability to define hierarchical data schemas that enable you to create data connected applications.