Rants Tagged with “Blend”
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UPDATE: The client doesn't mind that I mention them so I'll tell you that its the great people at SchoolMaster. Siebrand Dijkstra and his crew are doing some interesting things with Silverlight.
I love teaching the Silverlight Tour as pretty much every class I teach I learn something new. I get used to certain features of Blend that do what I need but because of some bugs, I have gotten too good at hand-editing my XAML. In my current class (a private class for a Dutch software company), one of their very bright engineers showed me this trick:
I was explaining how you can specify the rows/columns in the main grid by clicking on the top/left bars as seen below:
I was starting to explain that the nested grid must be edited by hand or by using the row/column editor when I hand raised in the back. He explained that if you double click on a container (or a ContentControl), it will switch to editing that container with the same functionality. He pointed out that the yellow outline indicates the current container focus:
Cool! That will make a lot of my editing much easier. I started playing around with the feature when I got back to the hotel and found out that it works with ContentControls too (Button, etc.):
This way I can draw directly inside a button. I always used some odd tricks to get this to work. I hope this is relatively new...I'd feel silly if its been there since v1.0.
Let the ridicule begin!
The feedback system that Microsoft uses seems broken. It works well in letting us know what they are doing, but the MS team never seems to tell us why they aren't going to fix something. Its really frustrating to spend the time to try and alert them to a problem and to feel brushed off.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why development teams have to prioritize some bugs and features over another...but at least a single sentence from the team saying why they didn't think a bug is worth fixing isn't much to ask.
The bug I reported seemed to be such a simple one, that I am surprised its not fixed. The problem stems from the fact that Silverlight uses a completely different attribute for determining how a media file plays in an MediaElement than does WPF does. I can't imagine why its different but it is:
WPF:
<MediaElement Source="somefile.wmv" LoadedBehavior="Manual" />
Silverlight:
<MediaElement Source="somefile.wmv" AutoPlay="false" />
Any ideas why they wouldn't fix Expression to allow the designer to set this?
UPDATE: It seems that complaining can actually help! If you follow this link you'll see that a Blend PM (Steve White) apologizes for this. I hope that other bugs like this get the attention that Steve gave...especially for people who don't blog obsessively like I do.
There is an updated build of Expression Blend's August Preview. For some users it complains that wants a CD key and has an expiration date soon (mine is at seven days). It was supposed to work without a CD key and it looks like they've fixed it. Tim Heuer mentioned the new build so if you're having the problem, please download this new version
In this new
Silverlight Video, I show you how to use
Expression Blend to create a simple design including clipping paths and grouping.
I've created a simple template for creating a new WPF/E template for Blend. Simply download the .zip file and extract it your Blend directory (usually c:\program files\microsoft expression\blend 1.0\). Once you do that you can "Add New Item..." and add a WPF/E Asset like so:
Let me know if you have any problems...
I've blogged about how short-sighted it seemed that the Expression tools were not going to be available to MSDN Subscribers. I am glad to report that they have come to their senses! I think it is a great comprimise to include Blend and Web in MSDN. Expression Design and Video will still require additional licensing outside of MSDN, but they are less developer tools anyway.
I want to thank everyone inside of Microsoft who I know lobbied hard for this. It was a big political fight and it required opinions across the company to sway the decision. I for one will appreciate the benefits of this fight.
While I like the Expression Studio toolset I am dismayed that these tools will not be available for most developers without the extra expense. It seems at this point that Expression Studio will *NOT* be available as part of MSDN Subscriptions, but instead will require separate purchase options. It would seem to me that Expression would widen the MSDN subscription base to include designers in organizations and improve early adoption of the tools as it would get them in people's hands faster.
I hope Microsoft revisits this decision and reverses it.
For me, one of the compelling "WPF/E" stories is the toolset. Like WPF, the Expression toolset is meant to fully support "WPF/E". Currently the new Expression Design (was Expression Designer) support export to "WPF/E" XAML. Expression Blend at this time doesn't support "WPF/E" natively but with a little coaxing I have demos that show it working that i'll be showing off soon.
The interesting bit is Expression Media which will enable Video producers to create video pre-built with "WPF/E" XAML wrappers ala SoapBox and YouTube.
For those who haven't read it on other blogs, here's my take on the Expression Studio tools:
- Expression Design: An Adobe Illustrator-like designer.
- Expresion Blend: A XAML editor that integrates with Visual Studio project files to provide seemless XAML editing without having to 'throw the design over the wall' to developers.
- Expression Web: FrontPage v.Next. Better and more powerful, but I think it is really aimed at that level of user.
- Expression Media: A full featured media editor for support with post-production work (e.g. intros, outros, watermarking, etc.).
