Working in Expression Blend, you won’t have to concern yourself with the XAML code that Blend generates. It will work. Guaranteed. Only when you start coding or changing the XAML markup by hand, you may create invalid XAML that no design view is able to render any more. To be absolutely sure that...
Tutorials
Structuring XAML in Blend
Thursday, August 12 2010 - Tutorials
Animating the Silverlight opacity mask
Tuesday, May 11 2010 - Tutorials
I used to use Adobe Flash a few years ago. Not much - just enough to get a couple of little projects done. Silverlight competes with Flash and Flex. That may or may not be the official Microsoft position - but it is true nevertheless. Most of my work involves creating corporate level Silverlight apps...
Quick and easy scalable rounded bevels
Tuesday, May 11 2010 - Tutorials
Too much photoshop! I was watching a UI design video yesterday where the presenter imported a Photoshop design into Blend and turned it into a Silverlight GUI. One thing I noticed was that he kept a lot of the raster layers from the Photoshop image as graphical elements inside the Silverlight app. If...
Silverlight Template Launched
Wednesday, February 17 2010 - Tutorials
Last week I launched my first Silverlight Template. The idea behind the template was to allow people to download the source code and pull apart a project made completely in Expression Blend and hopefully learn some tips and tricks around working in Blend. I wanted to follow up the template launch with...
Minimizing your designer footprint
Tuesday, January 12 2010 - Tutorials
With the introduction of more powerful web platforms comes the ability to create more intense experiences and intricate designs. When creating these new experiences take into account the effect the application will have on a user’s machine and internet connection. This is not a new problem with...
Animating Clipping Paths using Perspective
Wednesday, December 02 2009 - Tutorials
If you have played BoarderLands you will understand the demo reference. Animating clipping paths is a great technique to know, it allows you to show sections of an image without moving the whole image. To create a clipping path, place your image on the canvas, create the shape you want for the clipped...
Creating a Custom Accordion Menu in Blend
Wednesday, November 11 2009 - Tutorials
In this brief tutorial I will show how you can create your own custom accordion menu from scratch. We will be using Behaviors so that you won't need to program a single line of code. Please be aware that there are many ways to create custom controls depending your desired end result, and this particular...
Getting in-depth with SketchFlow
Monday, October 26 2009 - Tutorials
SketchFlow is a super fast way to get your ideas across to a client without spending too much time on the intricacies that come with building rich internet applications. Gone are the days of trying to express your ideas on pen and paper, which can be extremely tedious when designing applications with...
Behaviours in Blend 3
Monday, October 05 2009 - Tutorials
With all the great new features of Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3 comes behaviours. Behaviours allow you to take your Silverlight applications to the next level without having to get down and dirty with any coding at all. For example, behaviours help you quickly and easily illustrate everyday interactions...
Simple Data Binding in Blend 3
Monday, August 03 2009 - Tutorials
I know most designers like to stick with creating the graphics and leaving all the coding to developers, but Data Binding is so simple and could come in very handy for you one day. Text to text binding Text to text binding is a good place to start because it’s the most basic type of binding. It...
