Expression Blend 3: Free Download! Comments about Blend 3 and purchase justifications!
WOW! Expression Blend 3 is IMPRESSIVE! Download it for free from this site:
Here is a table for your justification to purchase Expression Blend 3 by your company when it comes out, you have time to make sure it gets in the fiscal year end budget. If you are student employee or intern, start talking to your boss, just because you get it for free from Dreamspark or MSDNAA doesn’t mean your company can use it for free.
Changes |
My Comments |
Useful to justify purchase |
Importing Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files |
Great that the Expression tool will tell you the features that are not supported! |
Useful |
Effects |
Support for WPF and Silverlight graphic effects |
Useful |
Gradient tool improvements |
Actually works, I thought the previous version required to much coordiation |
Not useful, do the bean counters understand what this means? |
Layout operation improvements |
Fixed annoying alignment problem |
Seems like a bug fix, certainly a reason to buy it, but keep it short for the bean counters |
Design-time annotations |
Looks like they are doing cut and paste from existing code, good idea! |
Useful, makes work more efficient |
Skinning |
Looks good` |
Put an improved skin in an image in the justification |
Creating templates from artwork |
Saves time |
Useful, saves time, time is money |
Improved support for VSM |
OMG, the state manager makes more sense to me now |
Useful, tell the bean counters that this is a NEEDED tool, will make your stuff better, stronger! |
State pinning |
Great |
Bean counters might not get it and it could confuse them. I wouldn’t mention it |
Editing state transitions |
YES! YES! OMG YES |
Make a video for the bean counters, they might get it. If it is written justifications, could be confusing |
Drawing into state |
Handy |
Put it in the video, in fact just do the whole justification as a video, a short video |
Interactivity |
Makes life easier for the developers |
|
XAML, C#, and Visual Basic Code Editing |
Umm, many people thought you could already do this, I just used Visual Web developer which was free and easy to transit to |
For the bean counters tell them this will make you and the (Graphic Artists or developers, pick the one you aren’t) work better together |
Data |
Nice very nice |
|
Using sample data |
Good for both graphics and developer |
Show this to the bean counter by using data they understand, steal one of their spreadsheets. |
Data binding |
OMG: Bind object properties Drag and drop data items Master/Detail list/detail views Improved Data Context binding Create hierarchical data connected application |
Use the stolen spreadsheet from the cell above (don’t take anything with social security numbers on it, they aren’t interesting anyway) |
Silverlight |
Much better |
|
Silverlight 3 support |
Modify Silverlight APPS in Expression |
Useful, put it in the video you are making. If written, keep it short. |
Web site support |
Now I am getting bored |
|
Using sample data |
Expression 3, Silverlight and Web site combine as one |
Put this in the efficiency column |
Source file version control |
||
TFS support |
NICE! But boring for most |
OMG! Tell the bean counter you will be able to show status and costs easily, if they spend a few more dollars for TFS |
Animation |
Ok, now we need the help files to be in sync with the Expression 3, cause they aren’t in Expression 2 |
Useful |
More properties available to animate |
Nice |
Up to use to use for justification |
Better support for easing in Silverlight |
I like it |
You may have to explain this to the bean counters |
Animating to resource values |
Ok |
This is just confusing to most bean counters, if this makes a difference you’re stuck with Expression Blend 2 |
Text |
||
Improved embedding of fonts and subsets of fonts |
Okey Dokey |
See Cell above |
Extensibility |
||
Extensible Asset Library |
Efficiency |
Take time to explain this to the bean counters |
Artboard extensibility |
This means that you can make a tool to solve that hard problem you hate to have to do all of those keystrokes or whatever |
Take the time to explain this one, it is critical |
Extensible project templates |
Templates = Efficiency |
Make sure the bean counter uses real template files that end with a t |
Workspace |
||
Docking and workspace configuration |
This will speed up bringing in temps and so forth |
Definitely mention this in the justification |
Direct selection improvements |
Design fix in my opinion |
Could be confusing, why didn’t Microsoft do this from the beginning? |
Marquee selection of points |
Nice, efficiency |
If you haven’t run over 5 minutes in your justification video |
Auto-scroll and zoom improvements |
Ok, yawn |
Not a big deal for the bean counters, might be confusing |
Keyboard shortcuts and modifier keys |
Great, needed it earler |
Do you really think the bean counters who live in excel really care about this? Since this has been in Excel for awhile they may not understand the big deal. |
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