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...
Tutorials
Minimizing your designer footprint
Tuesday, January 12 2010 - Tutorials
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...
Make Controls From Scratch - Toggle Button
Monday, July 20 2009 - Tutorials
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a simple toggle button that has an on and off state using the Make in to a control feature in Expression Blend 3, the Visual State Manager, and some Animation Easing. First we need to create the design of the control. You can use Expression Design or...
Import Photoshop files to Blend 3
Wednesday, July 15 2009 - Tutorials
Many graphic designers are comfortable with using Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. When designing an interface, you might find yourself duplicating efforts if creating your designs first in Adobe Photoshop and then again in Expression Blend. But with the introduction of Expression Blend 3 comes the ability...
Splash screens and Loaders in Silverlight
Monday, June 15 2009 - Tutorials
Adding a loader or splash screen to your animation can add the final touch and bring all the elements together. This tutorial will teach you 3 different techniques to creating great loading screen. 1. Progress Bars 2. Text percent loaded 3. Simple loading animation. First steps The first step is to set...
How to Create Sample Data in Blend 3
Friday, May 22 2009 - Tutorials
One of the cool new features of Blend 3 is the ability to generate random sample data. If you want to style a listbox or other control which normally requires some sort of data, you can set Blend to generate data so you can focus on the styling. Look for the Data tab (by default over on the right side...
