Sunday, April 26, 2009

Using Blend 3 for Silverlight 2

by Michael Wolf via Michael Wolf on 4/26/2009 7:42:18 PM

Outside of Sketchflow one of the coolest features in Blend 3 is the ability to easily turn visuals like paths into standard controls. This combined with the introduction of photoshop and illustrator makes for some nice additions to the workflow options we already have. Joanna Mason (who I also pestered about a fireworks import like Grants ) did a great presentation at mix showing off the complete flow from Adobe CS to full blown silverlight controls, but it left me wanting this for current projects not projects in the future. Luckily one of the best things about XAML is that you can't spell XAML without XML. Thus its very easy to generate a control template in Blend 3 and copy it directly over to Blend 2 for use in a Silverlight 2 application. Once you get the concepts of the blend parts list and the steps down its easy as ctr+C ctr+V to move it from blend 3 to Silverlight 2.

Check out the following screen cast showing how simple it is to do.



Heres a couple things to keep in mind when trying this out.

• The illustrator and photoshop import are not perfect yet. There is no support yet for effects and often it seems the import can not deal with very complicated files.
• When working with blend 3 if you want to also work with Silverlight 3 I suggest you look at Shawn and Amy's bat file utility allowing you to switch frameworks easily.
• Remember beta is after all beta, although most templates seems transportable, your mileage will vary.