Microsoft Expression Blend™2 Features

Tools for Creativity

WYSIWYG Design

Composite your vector and bitmap artwork, video, audio, rich text, controls, and containers, and create custom vector elements using sophisticated layout and snapping tools.

High-Quality Text

Produce rich typographic designs with ClearType® support, including highly formatted text and anchored graphics. Speed production with in-context spell-checking and support for global languages. Easily embed all or part of any typeface you need into your projects.

Better Animation Support

Animate any object along one or more timelines by setting property keyframes, using onscreen motion path editing for precise trajectory control. Arrange vertex animation with Bezier segments and add path points to an existing animated path.

Video Support

Incorporate high-quality interactive video across a wide range of resolutions and quality settings, including HD video. Use your video as a "visual brush on any control or UI surface.

Custom Styling

Customize the look and feel of your controls without writing code. Add animation, graphics, 3D, and video as design elements to any control, including interactive, state-based effects. Define your own reusable custom styles or apply standard Windows themes.

True 3D

Import geometry from leading 3D authoring tools, or create models directly in Expression Blend. Then easily manipulate and animate in true 3D, using camera position, surface materials, z-space animation, and surface texture mapping.

Split View XAML Editor

Visually edit your clipping paths once they have been created and animate them with similar support to as regular vertex animations.

Clip-path Editing

Incorporate high-quality interactive video across a wide range of resolutions and quality settings, including HD video. Use your video as a "visual brush on any control or UI surface.

Web site support

Silverlight 1.0 applications can now be opened as a website. Web sites are a collection of files (HTML, XAML, images, etc) and folders that exist on disk. The ability to open these projects increases the interoperability between Blend and Visual Studio.

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Codeless Interactivity

Common Controls

Add standard controls such as buttons, scroll bars, list boxes, menus, radio buttons, and checkboxes-or composite multiple control elements together to form compound controls. Then customize the appearance and behavior of these functional controls to suit even the most demanding requirements.

Advanced Controls

Expand your interface by including advanced controls and layout functions, such as ready-made gridsplitters, ink canvases, treeviews, expanders, sliders, rich text boxes, tab controls, and toolbars.

Databinding

Bind your interface elements to each other, to user input, or to data from Web services and .NET objects, so that your objects update dynamically and your application comes to life even before writing code.

Fluid Layouts

Design adaptive layouts using containers that automatically handle scaling and repositioning of content and controls.

Triggers

Set interactive triggers for any object state, or directly on the timeline as an additional animation property.

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Efficient Collaboration

Modern Interface

Expression Blend's design oriented interface maximizes your work space. A dynamically filterable Properties panel helps you find what you are looking for instantly and by being built using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Expression Blend's UI is uniquely scalable for different monitor resolutions.

Live Preview

Make immediate creative decisions based on real-time previews of interface elements that are dynamically bound to external data sources.

Collaborate with Designers

Incorporate design elements from Expression Design and other leading creative professional tools using available XAML exporters and support for standard bitmap and 3D content formats.

Collaborate with Developers

Enhance your productivity by seamlessly sharing projects and development code with Visual Studio for enhanced development capabilities including debugging, Web services design, and enterprise application lifecycle management.

XAML

Directly edit XAML code with colored syntax highlighting. Maintain quality and vision when converting your prototype designs to final products because the Expression family and Visual Studio all speak the same "language."

Connect to Code

Leverage existing external resources by importing and referencing .NET code libraries through simple drag-and-drop actions (WPF only)

Audio/Video

Preview video and audio in the design environment. Speed your video post-production workflow with the existing ecosystem of Windows Media encoding, editing, content management, and digital rights management solutions.

JavaScript Editor

Use the built-in JavaScript editor to add interactivity to your applications and avoid switching programs mid flow.

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Deliver Better Experiences

Richer Experience

Deliver highly usable, rich and enjoyable user interfaces to your customers.

Delivery Options

Build cinematic and compelling user interfaces for applications on the Windows desktop, web, Media Center, kiosk, or Tablet PC.

Online/Offline

Harness the power of .NET Framework 3.5 for Desktop applications and incorporate online/off-line data capabilities so your users can take your application anywhere.

Accessibility

For Desktop applications, Globalize and deliver fully accessible user interface elements for customers of all abilities, and add support for alternative input devices such as tablets using the built-in WPF controls.

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