Expression Blend is Not Only for Designers

Joel Neubeck (joel@neubeck.net)

Why?  Decrease the amount of effort involved with designing your UI.  Another plus is randomized data and design only data sources.

Example is from a Silverlight Navigation Application.  open a view in Expression Blend, the Data Tab, New Sample Data.  Use it to generate data to bind your view to.  Drag your collection onto a design surface and wow, it generate the ListBox.  Uses EB to design the layout of the ListBox.  Changes the ItemTemplate of the StackPanel in the Grid.

Verbose XAML which duplicates default properties makes your XAML parsing slower. 

Uses Blend to change his listboxes into a ListBoxDragDropTarget.  Uses EB to copy the item template for his list box.  Wants to modify the visual states.  Changes selected state to have a color of yellow.

Addition states added with SL4.  Uses Assets to modify the behaviors of a rectangle.  Demo of the fluid movement behavior. 

Tard tried to quit early.  Realized that he had 30 mins left. 

Creates a new state which move a textblock off the form, and ties the interaction of his grid .

Shows how to use WrapPanel and his generated data to remove horizontal scrollbars.