With Flash,
the name refers to the browser plug-in (and the associated
file format) and for the mighty editor or IDE that allows creation of
these
rich Internet applications (RIAs). So, it was just a matter
of time until Microsoft would release a similar tool that tried to bridge
the gap between designers and developers and appeals to both
groups.
Microsoft Expression Blend is also part of the Microsoft Expression Studio. The first
version targeted WPF developers and did not offer anything for Silverlight
developers (or WPF/E developers, as they were called then). However,
Expression Blend for Silverlight 2 changes that. (Up-to-date links to a
trial version of that software will be available at http://silverlight.net/.)
When you set up a new project, one of the options is to create a
Silverlight JavaScript application (see Figure 1). If you look
closely at the project structure in Figure 2, you will
see that it looks quite similar to the project based on the Silverlight
Visual Studio template.
Expression Blend 2 is somewhat integrated with Visual
Studio. Double-clicking on a JavaScript file in the project
explorer opens it in Notepad (the Windows editor), but when working with
event handlers , you can set how Visual Studio 2008 handles them,
as Figure 3 shows. Alternatively, Expression Blend 2
can also provide the skeleton code for event handlers in the clipboard so
that you can use them in any other arbitrary application. It is possible
that future versions of Expression Blend 2 will facilitate integrating
external applications.
NOTE
Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition may also be used as an
event handler code editor.
Although Expression Blend 2 is still far from perfect (Adobe Flash
has had several years to raise the bar), it is currently the best choice
for Silverlight developers in search of some visual help for developing
their applications, especially from a design perspective.
Now it's time to dive more deeply into Silverlight, and how you
create rich user experiences with
WPF and XAML, the subject we explore in Part 2.
