Get to Know Microsoft Expression Blend 4

Hey everyone! After a really busy day, glad to be able to come back and post again! I thought of finally sharing about Microsoft Expression Blend 4! Now, if you are new, and or an experienced Silverlight/WPF developer, you probably might have heard of Microsoft Expression Blend 4 before. Microsoft Expression Blend 4 is an whole IDE by itself, and frankly, for a developer like myself, I had my reservations about using Expression Blend initially.

The honest truth is that I'm someone born without the flair for design. Although I do enjoy the benefits of using Photoshop when it comes to producing simple web graphics. But if you are to come to me and ask me to churn out brand new, graphically engaging effects, well, I'll probably turn you down 9 out of 10 times. Lolx!

Anyway, one thing I've learnt as a developer/consultant is that you can never totally ignore the design aspect of development. Regardless of whether you are doing ASP.NET, or you are doing Silverlight/WPF. At the end of the day, it pays off to know abit about what Photoshop, or even Expression Blend can do for you.

I've definitely come to appreciate Expression Blend a lot more now. So, since we are on the topic of Expression Blend 4, perhaps I can share a little more about it's amazing UI:

Main View

Click on the image to see the larger detail version. Here is a simplified description of what you can do with this amazing UI:

1. The Quick Utility Belt!!
   
   This is the simple term I like to call it. Despite of what the books name it. Yes, there is a proper term for it, Blend Toolbar. Here, you can actually achieve so many things, but its too much for me to go into detail here on each and every single functionality. But I particularly find the Gradient Tool, Layout Controls, Text Input Controls and the Input controls most useful! I used to think Photoshop has a easy way to control the appearance of Gradients, but after using Expression Blend 4, I hate to admit it, that its much more easy using Expression Blend.
2. The Assets Library
   
   If you are new to Silverlight, or WPF, or development in general, then you must know that it's very easy for you to create controls, layouts, buttons, other silverlight related controls using the Assets Library. All you need to do is to drag and drop the controls you need to the workspace (the white area that appears in the center of the screen when you create a new project). Once you have dropped the controls you need to the workspace, next thing you need to do is to set the relevant properties in the Properties Panel.
3. Objects and Timeline Panel
   
   One more thing I've come to love about Expression Blend is it's simplicity in managing and creation of Animation, and managing the behaviors for user controls and objects on the workspace. I have worked on Adobe Flash for many years (eventhough I'm not an expert at it), and I must admit, I picked up on the timeline panel much faster than Flash. Flash...I think I took 6 months to actually figure it out.
   
   The simplicity of the Timeline Panel really made it such a ease and joy to work with necessary animations in my applications. Generally, I do only about 10-20% of animations on most projects, unless the client requires a silverlight-driven game or WPF-driven game.
4. Workspace (The Blank Canvas where anything is POSSIBLE!)
   
   Yes, that is what I believe in strongly. The blank workspace is where you can create anything imaginable. It's just like the blank canvas of our minds. If you can envision what you want to create, start to envision it on the workspace. Where do you want the menu to be, where will the member sign in panel be? Where will be the products listing section? There is just endless possibilities to what you want to create. 
5. The Properties Panel
   
   Every object and control on the workspace has a personality and life of it's own. When you envision your layout, think of it like a breathing living human being. Or a character that you want to create for your blockbuster movie. What sort of personality do you want your button to have? What sort of characteristic will your application have? Fanciful? Eye Candy? Or corporate, yet fluid layout? What you have envisioned, trust me, with some tweaks and combinations from the properties panel, and you will be able to achieve what you want! 

Okay, so maybe you are wondering, is this Expression Blend really as good as what he says?? Disclaimer, when I first came to this UI, I was confused by what it does. The layout doesn't look anything like what I have used before, and definitely different from Visual Studio! I was immediately turned off.

But it was only 1 day, that I finally decided to give Expression Blend a try, and then I realized that its so easy to do so many things, and trust me, it's much faster than trying to code everything using VS. Sure, you can also code it using Visual Studio, but take my advice, Expression Blend will save you many precious hours, and perhaps buy you more sleeping time! If this experience sounds familiar, you are right, I shared a similar experience with one of the authors from the Silverlight 4 books.