Blend – September 2007 Version

Microsoft has published a new version of the Blend version 2 product. The preview of September, in this version some new features have been implemented that are really important and that will make life easier for those who are making a transition or are making Flash and Expression coexist.

Some of the most notable features of the September version of Blend 2 are :

Integration with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

With this version of Blend projects from Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 can be opened, however the projects by default are not from VS2008 since it is not possible to open them in VS2005 even if you have Microsoft .Net Framework version 3.5.

Creation of Controls from existing objects.

Now Blend includes a new feature that allows converting existing content into a control that can be used again (instantiated). The selected element, its resources and its animations are refactored into a new control.

Improvements to the XAML Editor and a Split view

The new Blend allows opening a XAML document and seeing at the same time the code and the design in a view “Split”, it also allows modifying the font, the size and the indentation of the XAML code, in this it is very close to what can be done with VS2008 which contains this same Split view for HTML and XAML.

StoryBoards Picker.

The StoryBoard picker (Picker) replaced the previous storyboard box, the picker allows leaving recording mode, allows you to create a new animation, duplicate, reverse or delete the selected animation. You can also rename the selected animation.

StoryBoard and KeyFrame Properties.

September Blend allows modifying the properties from the properties panel, now you can modify the direction of the animation and its repetition model.

Vertex Animation

September Blend contains a new feature to animate individual vertices (points and tangents) on a line. Before if the vertex was modified the original shape was modified permanently. I think this solves a shape animation problem that was very strange for Flash designers.

Bar of “Controls”

A new bar over the art board allows identifying and even selecting objects inside the template hierarchy, this allows quickly changing the scope in the editing processes of the templates and styles in WPF.

Font Embedding

Blend 2 contains new functionality to ensure that the fonts that were selected in the project are the same ones that the user will see at the moment of running the application, the fonts are now embedded in the project to guarantee their adequate distribution. The new Font Embeding menu allows embedding the font.

I hope it is helpful

Juan Carlos Peláez

MCTS

Member of Microsoft Speaker Group Andino

Member of the Microsoft Colombia Influencers group.

Keywords: Expression Blend, Microsoft, .Net, WPF, New Features, StoryBoards