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Expression Blend2 Sept Preview released.. a must 'upgrade' for WPF and silverlighters .

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Blend2  Sept Preview was released last friday to the public...   An overview of the new features is in the Expression team's blog...  

Please do not miss the link to the videos that showcase the new features; watching all the videos takes approx 20 mins and you will get a lot out of them.

My experience so far after a week of internal use:

  • The new vertex animation stuff just rocks...  it makes things so much easier.. 
  • I have been using the ability to create reverse storyboards for triggers quite a bit; that was a must do... 
  • The ability to edit KeyFrames is much better explained in the video than in the blog post;  the blog description is accurate, but you don't get the part of "graphically modifying the splines"..   (or was it just me that did not get it the first time? Splines are above my level any way :( )
  • On object manipulation, the "Ctrl-drag" to copy is very handy too.. and the multi-object transform is useful too ..
  • Splitview is very handy...  love it since Cider beta2..
  • BreadCrumbBar is handy -- but if you are looking for it in Silverlight, I don't think it is there.. it seems to be WPF only...

Overall the release rocks.. It feels solid; I did not get crashes or instability... 
For you WPFers, there is just too much goodness to pass; I would say even if you had RTM of 1.0 you should give this a try.. 
For you silverlighters, you should continue to pick CTPs as there will continue to be improvements to the alpha ..

My immediate wishlist is for next CTP is "Selection sync" in the splitview like Cider does ....   Christmas is coming.. cross your fingers  or send my buddy unni some cash emai..

PS -- { I did not know there were videos in the external post,  so I had just created a few lame 5 min samples of what I can do now with vertex animations in silverlight . Since I ftped them, might as well link to them ...  Chart,  Arrow, Circle ...  ... this is your chance to show off... create some thing cooler, that should not be hard, and email me a 'you oughta take a design class dude' email...  

Happy blending

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