What’s new in Expression Blend 3 Preview?
Today I’ve received a few tweets and emails asking for a list of all the Expression Blend 3 Preview features. Here’s the “What’s new” doc with a short summary of new features as well as a condensed list below :)
“With Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Preview, you can create Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications for the desktop and Microsoft Silverlight 3 applications for the web. Expression Blend 3 Preview is a major new release, taking the product in a number of new, important directions, such as on-the-fly sample data generation. We also added support for several Silverlight 3 features. Expression Blend 3 Preview is a step on a long journey towards tools that are meant to empower designers to participate in the process of software creation in deep, meaningful, and creative ways.” ~Expression Blend PM Team
NEW Expression Blend 3 Preview Features:
Silverlight 3:
- Create and modify SL3 applications
- Update SL2 project to SL3 projects
- Additional Silverlight App + Web Site project type
Design features:
- Import Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files
- Support for WPF and Silverlight 3 graphic effects
- Gradient tool improvements
- Layout operation improvements
- Design-time annotations
Skinning:
- Creating templates from artwork
- Improved support for VSM
- State pinning
- Editable state transitions
- Drawing into states
Interactivity:
- XAML, C#,and Visual Basic Code Editing
- Behaviors
Data:
- Enable usingsample data
- Improved data binding
- Support for DataGrid control in SL3 apps
Source file version control:
- TFS support included
Animation:
- More properties available to animate
- Better support for easing in Silverlight
- Animating to/from resource values
Text:
- Improved embedding of fonts
- Support for subsetting fonts
Extensibility:
- Extensible Asset Library
- Artboard extensibility
- Extensible project templates
Workspace & Artboard:
- Enable docking and workspace window configuration
- Artboard selection and insertion improvements
- Allow marquee selection of points
- Auto-scroll and zoom improvements
- Additional keyboard shortcuts and modifier keys
Note: The SketchFlow feature demoed at the MIX09 keynote is not available in this preview, but we do hope to get that feature into your hands in an upcoming release. Christian Schormann has written a nice article on SketchFlow, so be sure to check it out for more info.
If there are any features you’d like more info about leave a comment :) We (the Blend PM team) are working on getting more content up in the weeks to come :)
-Janete
