Blend it like Beckham

Before I start explaining what I have been able to do and what I have not been able to do I'd like to give a little background to this blog. I created this today 7/19/07, but actually began my experience last week. So there are going to be several posts from today to recount what I have done up until now.

Now back to the Blend!

So far I have been able to create basic animations very easily. While I find myself still thinking about motion tweens and movie clips, Blend has done a pretty good job creating its own methodology for animation. The visual tree by default seems to have the stacking order in a counter intuitive fashion, but atleast they give you the option to toggle between ascending and descending the cascading order.

With only about 2 days of actually monkeying around in the application I have a pretty base understanding of:

• Animation - Key Frames and TimeLine
  
• Data Binding
• Basic Event Triggers
• Object Property Manipulation
• Basic XAML Syntax

I am finding that trying to bind more than one piece of data to a control is not initially apparent. Considering that I am a designer and not a developer I do not have Visual Studio, and even if I did I am not at all familiar it. I am hoping that despite my lack of development expertise that I can still create robust and functional RIAs that are comparable to what I am able to create in Flash.

Week One

My first week with Blend was a pretty exciting one. I spent a very little amount of time in the UI to get a feel for the workspace and try to familiarize myself with the tools. I am confident in saying that anyone with experience in tools like Photoshop, Flash, and Illustrator will immediately feel comfortable knowing that they have a base understanding of the tools for the most part. The standard Bézier drawing tools are there as well as your basic shape tools. (I LOVE THE BRUSH TRANSFORM TOOL!)

Microsoft has done a very good job in combining the best features of most of the software out on the market. While there are certainly tools that I understood there are also tools that are a mystery too.

In my first week I also spent a lot of time reading articles, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and exploring tutorials to get me ramped up to work in the application. I have compiled a list of some the resources that really impressed me the most.

• Amazing Demo Application Created in Silverlight
• Some Great Free Tutorials
• More Tutorials and Reference Material
  
• Silverlight QuickStart from MS
• Tons of great reading and Demos
  

Coming soon: Tony tries to make stuff in Blend!

Introduction

Hello everyone,

This blog will be a place for me to discuss the newest technology that web designers and developers may adopt. For the next several weeks I am going to be exploring Microsoft Silverlight development using Microsoft Expressions Blend.

A little about myself - I am a 28 year old web designer who has been using flash since Macromedia Flash v.3. I consider myself to be very versed in Action Script 1 and 2, but am not looking forward to learning another iteration of AS. Instead I want to focus on learning a language that will not be gone next year. I have a feeling that XAML may be just what I am looking for.

Over the past couple of years my Flash projects have become more dynamic as I began using external XML files to load elements into my applications. I was very happy in my actionscript 2 world within Macromedia Flash 8, but this turned out to be a short lived existence. I have gotten my feet wet with the new Flash CS3 application as well as the Expressions Blend Pre Release 2, and have to say that I am far more impressed with the Microsoft Product. Believe me when I say that I am just as shocked as you that I am publicly giving kudos to the same company that brought us such gems as Frontpage.

So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and read the trials, tribulations, and successes of techno-tony's adventures in Silverlight!