This is the list of new updates on the new Expression Blend 2 August Preview… directly from the product team. (Thanks Unni!)

“We are pleased to present our next preview of Microsoft® Expression Blend™ 2. Please feel to download and try from here.”

What is new in this preview?

Silverlight support
Expression Blend 2 August Preview continues to further support for building Silverlight applications by moving the project system towards creating Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate applications.

Visual Studio 2008 support
Expression Blend 2 August Preview can open and work with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 (formerly known as Microsoft® Visual Studio® code name “Orcas”) Beta 2 projects and solutions. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) projects created in Expression Blend are now, by default, Visual Studio 2008 projects if Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 is installed and such projects cannot be edited in Visual Studio 2005. Expression Blend 2 August Preview can still open the projects created using Expression Blend or Visual Studio 2005.

Make User Control
Expression Blend 2 August Preview contains an early look at new functionality that lets you re-factor existing content into a control that can be reused (instantiated). Currently, only selected elements—and their referenced resources—can be re-factored into the new control. Any referenced animations are currently lost, but the current plans for next release are to preserve these as well. You also need to build the project to be able to see and instantiate the new control.

XAML Editor Improvements
Expression Blend 2 August Preview allows you to specify font size, font family, word-wrap, etc. for the XAML editor (XAML tab). Stay tuned for future improvements!

Build options
When building inside Expression Blend 2 August Preview, the property $(BuildingInsideExpressionBlend) is set to true. This can be used in your project or .targets files to cause the build to behave differently. For more information on how Visual Studio supports this scenario, refer to this documentation.

Storyboard Picker
The Storyboard Picker replaces the old Storyboard combo box. The picker consists of a Storyboard label (with Rename command), a context menu (for fast New/Delete), a popup button (and resulting popup) and a Close button. The popup contains all Storyboards in scope in a multi-column layout. The Storyboard Picker can be resized, and its list filtered. The Storyboard Picker also contains a New button and contextual Delete and Close buttons. In addition to the improved usability, the Storyboard Picker label will in future serve as a selection affordance for Storyboards.

Object manipulation
Added ability to uniformly resize and scale multiple selected elements by using resizing handles on the artboard.

We look forward to your continuous support and feedback!

On behalf of the Expression Blend team,
-Unni

Today we released Silverlight 1.0 RC! (The very first version of Silverlight).

RC stands for Release Candidate. This means that the Silverlight 1.0 plugin is pretty much final. This RC version allows the community to test the plugin. If no major bugs or issues are found then this RC is renamed as a ‘final release’ and it is released to the community.

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in that helps designers and developers create compelling rich media web experiences. Check out www.silverlight.net for some cool videos, training and resources.

Releasing early versions of our technologies is nothing new to Microsoft. For many years Microsoft has had an intense community engagement culture where we’ve been delighted to share with you previews of our platforms and tools. Microsoft has done this for years in the world of developers. This is something really new in the world of designers though. Traditionally, we as designers had to wait until the products were available for purchase or be fully released to actually “try out” the product. We would have to apply for restricted ‘private betas’ that allowed only a few around the world to play with early versions of tools. With this much different approach from Microsoft that allows *anyone* to play with early versions of the tools, designers are empowered to try out, learn and give feedback before the actual product is on the shelves.

It’s important to mention that are some breaking changes between the previous Silverlight 1.0 Beta and this new Silverlight 1.0 RC. A ‘breaking change’ means that some features or ways of doing things with Silverlight 1.0 Beta have changed or are not available anymore in this newer and almost final Silvelight 1.0 RC. You might want to update any samples you created with Silverlight 1.0 Beta. You’ll find info on how to do this here…

Version numbers can easily get to be confusing. Right now, the version we are releasing is 1.0. This is the one that is almost done. At the same time however, there is another Silverlight version numbered 1.1. This 1.1 version is in much earlier stages (Alpha) compared to 1.0. We’ll be releasing 1.1 in the future and it will include a bunch of new features. When using Silverlight always determine what version you are targeting. A quick tip for you is: if you are about to start a real project that will go live soon use Silverlight 1.0. On the other hand, use Silverlight 1.1 Alpha only if you want to learn, experiment or even prototype a web experience using any of the upcoming features available only in 1.1.

Along with this Silverlight 1.0 RC there is a bunch of other things being released too:

Silverlight plugin
Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate 1 (You will also find a download option for Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh)

Expression
Expression Blend V2 August Preview compatible with Silverlight 1.0 RC
Expression Media Encoder Template Updater compatible with Silverlight 1.0 RC
Note: Expression Media Encoder was *not* updated. The installer above will simply make the video skins work with the Silverlight 1.0 RC.

Visual Studio
Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 (includes Beta 2 of VS Designer for WPF formerly code named “Cider”)
Silverlight 1.0 RC SDK (Software Development Kit) and Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh SDK

Other stuff (useful too )
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2
ASP.NET Futures CTP July 2007
There are also Go-Live Licenses for VS 2008 Beta 2, the .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2, and Silverlight 1.0 RC (Note: Go-Live does not apply to Silverlight 1.1). Go-Live License means you are totally allowed to use the technologies for real projects.

It has been a while since I wrote a blog post except for my personal blog … I used to have a pretty good one called multimediaDev.net but I stopped posting a couple years ago after I joined Microsoft. Now it’s time to come back so I’ve killed that old blog and have moved to this brand new domain artu.tv and with a new hoster: webhost4life.com. I used to be with Brinkster and I’ll miss them since they always had good services and their website/control panel design quality and style are outstanding compared to most hosters out there. Anyway, WebHost4Life offered a great deal… unlimited bandwidth, latest Windows server technologies, tons of storage space, good price and in particular (and the main reason I left Brinskter) is WebHost4Life does allow you to modify permissions to files and folders yourself!. Too simple as it might sound for some of you web server experts for me, a non expert this was a huge deal. I’ve been with other hosters and they didn’t allow you to set permissions so everytime I wanted to set new permissions I had to go and call support. Now it’s easy as I can do it myself.

I tried to install Community Server (second reason why I moved to WebHost4Life) but it took me a full day to get it done. Once I did, I found it a little hard to customize… I have not given up and will keep on studying to make it look the way I want.

In the meantime I have installed WordPress. It is not the end-to-end community solution like Community Server but well, it gives me the blogging feature which is my top priority right now.  The default template that is included in WordPress is pretty good and allows for customization. I was able to use Expression Web to customize CSS which I loved. The Manage Styles task pane in Expression Web made my day as it helped me find the styles I needed to modify. I started looking for the styles that corresponded to Header, Side Bar etc and just couldn’t find it clearly in the code so this feature in Web helped me find them visually.

WordPress uses PHP and the very smart community that creates it wisely separated the CSS in an external file so I really only had to use Expression to tweak things and voila. I also used Expression Design to create the header graphic (I use Design for all my vector artwork like cartoon characters) and then exported as PNG and used Adobe Photoshop to add some effects and to prepare the image for the web. I want to continue making my blog look better… for example, one of the things I want to do is make the header a Silverlight animation… may be make the character blink eyes and the lens flare move around… I’m sure you’ll all immediately notice when I do this… it’s hard not to see the difference between a static PNG image and a fully animated Silverlight experience.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!