TechDays’ Session: Expression Blend for Developers

In just less than a week, TechDays will kick off in Vancouver. There are tons of activities happening around TechDays next week, and I’ll be doing a presentation on Expression Blend for Developers. I really enjoy demoing Expression Blend to developers because it brings design into development and engages developers in the practical UI design level. You don’t need to be an artist to use Blend but it’s more important to understand the object model of UI components when using Blend. Developers are often very good at understanding this. Many of the front-end developers are also designers, and my goal of the presentation is to show you:

 Expression Blend is a valuable developer tool that can help you create great UX with better productivity at a lower cost.

In particular, here are some of the things I’ll cover. It’s a very demo heavy talk.

• Blend vs. Visual Studio: similarities, differences, and how you can use them together
• Practical design tips in Blend: create a glassy effect, animation, visual states for controls
• New features in Blend 3: Behaviors, SketchFlow, Visual Databing with Sample Data

If you are doing both design and development work, this session will give you a head start into Blend and teach you tricks that can save you lots of coding in Visual Studio. If you are working with designers, this session will help you better understand Blend’s capability and how to work with them efficiently in Blend. It is the second session in the Developing for the Microsoft-Based Plaftform on Sept. 14. Hope to see you there!

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