Expression Blend Tips & Tricks

Getting Things Done

Importing Graphics

Directly from Expression Design

Directly from Adobe Illustrator

Directly from Adobe Photoshop

Expression Design

Closer to what Blend needs

Build layouts logically

Copy XAML directly from Design

Skinning Controls

Skin once, use everywhere

When you need to make changes, only need to do so in one place

Skinned controls can be reused in other projects

Content Presenters

By default, not stylable

Add in text block

Bind it to the content present

Collapse the content present

Style the text block

Visual State manager

State are divided into logical groups

One group does not know about another groups state

Duplicate visual pieces that need to be animate across states

Event Handlers

Easy to implement in Blend

Allows you to make basic interaction

Developers can flush them out later

Data vs style

Style templates are for the visual parts of a control

Data templates should only be for present the data, leave the visual look to the style template

sample data

Blend supplies a few types of default Sample Data

These can be modified to serve your purposes

After modifying them, you cannot regenerate them from Blend

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