Thursday, March 19, 2009 2:45 PM
rudi
Expression Blend 3 is…
AWESOME
Ok, that sounds a little cliché… but it really is! Here are some of my favorite new features
Effects
In the Asset Library there is a new tab item called Effects
By selecting one of these effects and dragging it onto any element in the design surface will apply this effect to the element!
And here is the XAML that gets generated
<Ellipse>
<Ellipse.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect/>
</Ellipse.Effect>
</Ellipse>
PS. Also remember that by clicking on the DropShadowEffect in the Objects and Timeline pane, you can now use the property grid to set the effects properties!
IntelliSense
Blend finally has FULL intelliSense (Not just schema based)…
Perspective 3D with Projections
Silverlight now supports perspective 3D… This is extremely easy to setup using blend
Read more here
Import Adobe…
Adobe Illustrator
Photoshop
“You can now use Expression Blend 3 Preview to import both Adobe PhotoShop (.psd) files and Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files directly into your projects, while retaining layers, shapes, text elements, and more for easy editing inside Expression Blend itself. Note: Adobe live effects, blend modes, and the symbol sprayer are not supported. When you import an Adobe file, Expression Blend 3 Preview will display a message to let you know if any features of the imported file are not supported, and what actions you can take.”
Annotations
“Designers can now add visual bubble annotations (very similar to Microsoft Visio comments) to the artboard. These annotations are stored in the XAML file in the form of attached properties. They can be used to improve communication between team members. The annotations do not appear at runtime”
And their are MANY more
- TFS Support
- Behaviors
- Sample Data
- Some great new extensibility points
- SketchFlow
- Gradient tool improvements
- Layout operation improvements
Get Expression Blend 3 here (289MB)
Other great resources:
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Filed under: Expression Blend 3