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Archive for October, 2008

Free Expression Blend 2 video series for Designers

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Ah! giving away free stuff is what I like the most Makes people happy!

This year we are producing lots and lots of small 5min videos (aprox) to answer particular questions we’ve received about Expression Studio tools. We will be publishing these videos (dozens and dozens, which will become hundreds and hundreds soon) in the Expression Community site but in the meantime, let me do it again and share with you a sneak peak.

Here you have 16 videos originally recorded using Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview showing Silverlight 2 related activities. These videos are great for designers and also developers who are interested in UI design. Even though these were recorded with a preview version of Blend, the content is still valuable now that we’ve released Blend 2 SP1 (remember Blend 2.5 got renamed to Blend 2 SP1 - Service Pack 1 - after we released it a couple weeks ago). Check ‘em out and enjoy!

Blend2_Silverlight_Batch01.zip | Windowless Control | Customizing a ListBox | Databinding | How to Bind to a Scrollbar

Blend2_Silverlight_Batch03.zip | Modifying Storyboards at runtime | RadioButton Template | ScrollBar Template | HandOff Animations in Blend

Blend2_Silverlight_Batch04.zip | Creating User Controls | Building a small Calculator (to explore User Controls) | Grid Layout Panel

SkyDrive by the way is a free storage service (5GB) provided by Windows Live. Let me know if it works well for you. (I do not have the assets used in the videos to share with you but we will post those in the Community site in the future).

Posted in Annoucements | 13 Comments »

Expression Encoder 2 SP1 released

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Hello! Yesterday evening we released a Service Pack for Encoder 2. The amount of improvements and new features are so many that I think it’s actually better if you visit this site to get a comprehensive list. Notice that we now have an ‘Express’ version of Encoder. This is a free version you can get by downloading the trial for Encoder, letting it expire and then the product will continue to work without a few features listed in the page I mentioned above.

Expression Encoder 2 SP1 now also supports Silverlight 2 video player skins so you can now do a similar video player customization workflow from Encoder and then into Blend as we did in the good old Silverlight 1 days… old days indeed as now with Silverlight 2 everything is more straighforward and eaiser to do.

As a reminder we also have Service Packs for Blend 2 and Media 2. The one for Blend is particularly lovable as it provides Blend 2 with full support for Silverlight 2 projects… a must for all of you owners of Blend 2 (it’s a free upgrade).

Enjoy!

Posted in Annoucements | 1 Comment »

Participate in the PhizzPop Online Challenge!

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Hello!

A moment ago we launched the PhizzPop Design Challenge . PhizzPop is a series of activities for designers and Agencies to have fun and learn how to create experiences using Silverlight, WPF, Expression Studio and Live Services. PhizzPop has different activities:

PhizzPop Online

Everyone can participate here starting TODAY! Join the first online challenge and Build Games with Silverlight. We are providing a couple sample games you can customize with you own visual design elements. Deisgn new characters and settings, add sound or extend the game. You will also find 12 videos from AQUENT that will help you learn more about Expression and Silverlight and how to modify these games. If you need more training check out Total Training’s series on Expression Studio 2 tools. Participating in the PhizzPop Online Challenge is a great way to learn how to use Expression. If you are a designer, partner with a developer and customize and extend the game. If you are a developer, partner with a designer and work together to enhance those games. If you want to learn more about games with Silverlight check out the following links:

Andy Beaulieu - Andy has some amazing information and samples games for you to learn from. The Avalanche game in the PhizzPop Challenge is based on Andie’s SilverlightRock game.

SilverlighRocks - Beginning game programming in Microsoft Silverlight 2 using C#, presented by Bill Reiss and Silverlight Rocks!

PhizzPop Design Challenge

A web design and development competition. It is comprised of the PhizzPop Tour, a set of in-person challenges targeting top U.S. agencies; and PhizzPop Online, four online challenges targeting the broad community of Web professionals.

PhizzPop Tour

Between November 2008-March 2009 we’ll touch down in seven major cities. In each location, agencies will compete to design the best solution that solves a unique design challenge using Microsoft technologies. More info here…

Posted in Annoucements, Events | 3 Comments »

Expression Blend 2 SP1, Expression Media 2 SP1 and Silverlight 2 Released

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

Hello!

As many of you know already the buzz about Silverlight 2 being released started over the weekend. We first announced this during the Silverlight Day (MIX Essentials) event in Tokyo last Friday. Forest Key hinted about this imminent release. Today Silverlight 2 is available and resources are available at silverlight.net. At the same time the Expression team released a Service Pack (SP1) for Expression Blend 2. With this SP, Expression Blend 2 now fully supports Silverlight 2. To install the SP1 you need to have Expression Blend 2 installed.

We also released a Service Pack for Expression Media 2. �

Posted in Annoucements | No Comments »

DeepZoom Composer Stitched Photos

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

Using the latest version of DeepZoom Composer I stitched these photos… I love DeepZoom Composer!

Posted in General | No Comments »