UPDATE: The fixed Expression Blend 2 August Preview is now available… same name and location as initially posted. And a little gift for you check out this super cool data visualization article posted on Smashing Magazine… amazing stuff.

It turns out that the Expression Blend 2 August Preview build we released a couple weeks ago had a little problem. When going to New Project, the New Project dialog would not give the Silverlight 1.1 project option. There was also an “early expiration” issue. We are releasing an updated version tomorrow Tuesday [Now Available!]. The download will be named exactly the same: Expression Blend 2 August Preview and will be available exactly on the same location. I will post an alert here in my blog as soon as I know this has gone live. There were also some isssues with the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio but there is an updated build now… more info in this post. Remember we are dealing with early versions of these tools and these are Preview versions so these “details” can happen during this early releases but don’t worry :), I’ll keep you updated here in future ocassions. Thanks to everyone who has provided us feedback on this issue.

On another topic, after going through the process of installing this new round of bits for Silverlight 1.0 RC I ran into some challenges installing VS because the install is an .img file (ISO image) so you need to use this file to burn a DVD and then install VS from the DVD. Some folks in my team helped me figure this out because I don’t have Nero or Easy CD Creator or one of those CD/DVD burning tools. I then decided to create a What to Install for Silverlight 1.0 RC? document that showed the different tools (and preferred order) to install for Silverlight 1.0 RC.  I will keep this list updated for future releases.  I also added detailed help on how to burn this .img file into a DVD using free little tool from Microsoft.

 I also started working on a newer version of my blog. I want to use Silverlight extensively. Everything is quite easy. My two questions right now and the ones I’m doing some research on are: 1) Connecting the WordPress PHP based backend with my Silverlight UI. The question I have is on the PHP side. I need to create a PHP that converts the info in my blog database into XML file(s). Once that is done, it becomes easy to link to Silverlight as shown by Celso on his Weather or Netflix samples… I don’t know PHP so I’m looking for a Wordpress script that would do this or to create my own. My second challenge is text. I could simply create some elements in Blog as Silverlight (header, footer, navigation etc) but the really cool thing would be to do the entire blog with Silverlight. This is easily doable except for one thing: text is currently not selectable on SL 1.0. There is no right click either (for Copy/Paste functions) but that is a piece of cake as I can use other UI gestures to get the contextual menu. The thing is how make the text selectable. Celso gave me some ideas today but will need to try out. If someone has ideas let me know. I want my text to be selectable to people can copy pieces of my blog posts just like they do in other HTML based blogs (like this WordPress blog). The other thing that this experiment will help me with is learning more about how to make Silverlight content searchable. There are ways to do it. Here is a quick shot of the UI for the new blog created using Expression Design. I’m sure this Design will change!… it always does.