Expression Blend® 4 Release Candidate Release Notes

This document provides information that supplements the Expression Blend User Guide.

© 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Contents

Installation and prerequisites

  1. Side-by-side installation with Expression Blend 3
  2. Compatibility with Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate
  3. What is activation?

Known Issues
  1. Upgrading Silverlight 3 projects to Silverlight 4 RC
  2. Customizing the template of some Shapes is not supported
  3. In a Silverlight 4 project, animations are not applied to a template while editing out of context

Installation and prerequisites

  1. Side-by-side installation with Expression Blend 3

    Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate (RC) installs side-by-side with Expression Blend 3.

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  2. Compatibility with Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate

    The project format for Expression Blend 4 RC is compatible with Visual Studio 2010. To open and work with Silverlight 4 RC projects in Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate you will need to install the Microsoft Silverlight 4 RC Tools for Visual Studio 2010.

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  3. What is activation?

    Activation helps verify that your Microsoft Expression product is genuine and that it has not been used on more computers than the Microsoft Software License Terms allow. In this way, activation helps prevent software counterfeiting. Activation of your Expression product is required.

    Note: The information collected during activation will not be used to contact you.

    Setup will automatically attempt to activate your Expression product during installation. If automatic activation fails, or if you choose not to activate your Expression product during installation, you will have 60 days after installing your Expression product to activate it online or by phone.

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Known Issues

  1. Upgrading Silverlight 3 projects to Silverlight 4 RC

    When you attempt to open a Silverlight 3 project, Expression Blend 4 RC will offer to upgrade the project to Silverlight 4 RC. If the upgraded project references controls in the Silverlight 3 Toolkit then you are encouraged to install the Silverlight 4 Toolkit and then clean and rebuild your project. If the upgraded project references the Viewbox control, be aware that this has now moved from the Toolkit into the platform so you’ll need to change the following XAML:

    <controlsToolkit:Viewbox.../>
    to
    <Viewbox.../>

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  2. Customizing the template of some Shapes is not supported

    Editing a copy of the template of a Callout or a LineArrow Shape may result in a red exclamation mark being displayed on the design surface, or failure to render changes made in the template.

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  3. In a Silverlight 4 project, animations are not applied to a template while editing out of context.

    If you edit a Style via the Resources panel then you are editing it out of context (contrasted with editing the Style in the context of an object to which the Style is applied). While out of context in a Silverlight 4 project, if you navigate into the Style’s template and select visual states then those states’ animations will not be applied to the objects in the template. The artboard will therefore not update to reflect the animations. The same issue occurs with animations in a Storyboard.

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© 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.