Expression Blend 3 enables your ideas from concept to completion.

Expression Blend 3 revolutionizes the speed and efficiency with which you can take your ideas from concept to completion on the Silverlight and .NET platforms. Concepts and ideas can live through the project end-to-end, reducing redundancy, enhancing creativity and delivering compelling desktop and/or rich internet applications that exceed your client’s expectations for design, interactivity and usability.

Compelling Experiences

Expression Blend 3 enables you to iterate and deliver on your ideas faster, creating powerful and refined solutions without compromise for the desktop and the web for your clients. Sketchflow revolutionizes the speed and efficiency you can demonstrate a vision for an application while Behaviors bring an application to life, adding interactivity, animation and transitions without writing code.

Accelerated Results

Expression Blend breaks down the barriers between design and development that have historically slowed the development process to maximize the opportunities for synergy between design and development.

Sample data can be imported or created on the fly, robust code editing with XAML editor, C# and VB Intellisense as well as an improved workspace and design surface all enhance the speed and flexibility that ideas can be moved from concept to production.

Powerful Technology

Using Expression Blend and industry standard .NET technologies such as Silverlight, WPF, XAML, C#, VB, developers can deliver desktop and/or rich internet applications that are stable, scalable, accessible, reliable and secure.

The rapid end-to-end workflow available through Expression Blend, Visual Studio and the Microsoft platform enables the delivery of compelling results to your customers time after time, while still maximizing the investments you’ve already made in other tools and technologies you employ today.

Top 10 Features

1. SketchFlow revolutionizes the speed and efficiency you can prototype a vision for an application

   Rapidly demonstrate and iterate on ideas, application flows, screen layouts and functionality with your client using a SketchFlow prototype.

   

2. Enable interactivity without writing code

   Bring a project to life by adding interactivity, animation and transitions using drag and drop Behaviors, powerful building blocks of interactivity, without writing code.

   

3. Accelerate the creation of effective UI with sample data

   Increases the speed and flexibility you can envision a user interface through the effective use of sample data. Sample data can be seamlessly switched to a live data feed at any time.

   

4. Utilize your design assets - Import Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files

   Extensive and flexible import capabilities from Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator ensure a smooth transition of visual design assets from traditional workflows.

5. Code editing with Intellisense

   A full code editor with XAML, C# and VB Intellisense enables you to streamline your workflow and edit code directly in Expression Blend 3.

6. Styling and Customization

   Powerful template editing capabilities allow a control to be rebuilt as a bespoke, reusable control designed to exactly fit its purpose. Retain absolute control over how user interface elements interact. Whether an element in a control snaps into position or glides, moves in a linear fashion or with inertia, you are able to quickly and accurately experiment with different interaction models before finely tuning and finalizing the appropriate user experience of the application.

7. Support for Silverlight and WPF

   Fully leverage the underlying platforms, Silverlight for cross browser, cross platform deployment and WPF for the ultimate Windows client experience.

8. Improved User Interface

   The design surface and user interface of Expression Blend has been updated to help you work faster, have greater freedom to experiment with ideas and be more productive. Direct selection of objects, improved gradient creation, application shortcuts, customization of panel layouts, improved animation control, annotations; every element has been improved to help the tool get out of the way of the creative process.

9. Integrate with Team Foundation Server

   Stay in sync with your team by taking advantage of Team Foundation Server integration in Expression Blend. Team Foundation Server ensures the designers work is safe, versioned, up to date and available to the whole team.

10. Desktop and Rich Internet Application Workflow

    Designers and developers work seamlessly, sharing projects, code, and designs for better productivity and quality. This superior workflow is made possible through the use of XAML tools across Expression Blend, Visual Studio, Silverlight and WPF. XAML separates the code from the design and enables designers and developers to simultaneously iterate on both the design and code aspects of the desktop or rich internet application.

Expression Blend 3 Overview Video
Expression Blend 3 revolutionizes the speed and efficiency you can take your ideas from concept to completion on the Silverlight and .NET platforms. Concepts and ideas can live through the project end-to-end, reducing redundancy, enhancing creativity and delivering compelling applications that exceed your client’s expectations for design, interactivity and usability.

Introducing SketchFlow with Expression Blend 3
Explore a final SketchFlow project and the benefits of the prototyping workflow.

Download the assets, step-by-step guide, and video package (127MB)

Organizing and Importing Assets into Expression Blend 3
Understanding XAML and its role-A look at XAML markup. Exporting from Expression Design. Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop artwork into Expression Blend. Copying, Pasting and Exporting XAML into Expression Blend. Naming conventions and best practices

Download the assets, step-by-step guide, and video package (104MB)