Just 2 months after the release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP release, Microsoft released the final version of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 which also includes a single Blend version that can be used to build apps for Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone and Windows 8 Store etc.
The update is freely available for you to download from Microsoft site. I am going to share the direct link here for you to get easy access link.
Microsoft released CTP (Community Technology Preview) version of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 just few months after the release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. This new release comes with the Blend for Visual Studio which now supports all the major project templates.
If you are using multiple versions of Expression Blend, it’s time for you to upgrade to this release. Find out more about this release and download links.
Behaviors are most demanded feature to include in Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and/or WPF applications to implement proper MVVM pattern to do some UI level actions. These are pluggable on demand and don’t need any other extra code to integrate. Just a simple XAML change and you are done.
In this article, we will learn how to use the inbuilt “PlaySoundAction” behavior to add sound effect on button click. We will demonstrate it using Windows Phone 7 application. Read more to learn. Complete demonstration with images for each steps available.
Direct link: Download Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Preview for Silverlight 5 RC
Few days ago, I published a XAML Tips "How to Convert a Rectangle to a Path Control using Expression Blend?". Today in this post, we will discuss on another tips similar to that post. In this post, we will discuss on the steps to crop an element to give a desired output.
This post will help a beginner who just started designing XAML using Expression Blend. Hope, this small tip will help you to understand it in better way. Read to know more on this topic.
This will be a short tip of the day where I will show you the way to convert a Rectangle or a Ellipse control to a Path control. If you are not familiar with Expression Blend and currently working with it to design your UI, this tip will definitely help you in various scenarios.
Let’s start with a small demonstration using Rectangle control. You can do the same for Ellipse too. Read to know more.
Many time we need to change the layout type of any panel present inside the page. This is mainly a designers job but sometime developers need to change them on their requirement. In that case, people need to find out the start and end tag of the panel and change them accordingly. This is little bit a tricky process.
In this post, I am going to share you the easy process to switch between different layout types. If you are a designer or using Expression Blend, you are already familiar with it. But for a newbie, I think it will be a great help.
If you are a XAML designer and creating controls for Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 or WPF, you may come in some situation that the custom properties for the controls are not properly organized by the developers. If you come into such situation forward this link to the developers and they may find it useful.
In this article, we will learn how to well organize the custom properties of your control so that, designers can easily search in appropriate location. Read to know more about it.
In this post, I will share you some important Shortcut keys of Microsoft Expression Blend 4. If you are working with Expression Blend 4, this will definitely help you to improve your daily productivity work. Keep the list with you always to best use of the Shortcut keys in Blend 4 while designing your XAML page.
If you have more shortcuts, please share those to me and I will include them here as the key resource. Thanks for your support.
We are also publishing all those entries to Twitter and Facebook, whenever a new post has been submitted, keeping all followers up-to date. Find out more about March 2011 in this post.
Today we have completed 2nd month of our activity in Silverlight-Zone.com and got a huge nos. of responses from the community. In two months we crossed 30K+ visitors count which is pretty good. Audiences are mainly from United States, India and United Kingdom, followed by France and Germany. I will appreciate everyone's contribution towards this blog to make it a great success.
Silverlight-Zone.com posts articles/news on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, XNA, LightSwitch, XAML and Expression Blend etc. We are trying our level best to keep all of you updated on Silverlight-Zone.com. We are also publishing all those entries to Twitter and Facebook, whenever a new post has been submitted, keeping all followers up-to date. Find out more of February 2011 in this post.
Today, we have 14 news items posted in Silverlight-Zone. If you are a Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 application developer, follow Silverlight-Zone for daily news update.
In this issue we have posts from: Abhishek Baxi, Telerik Silverlight Team, Oren Gal, Abram John Limpin, Rudy Grobler, Windows Phone Geek, Deborah Kurata, Ali Raza Shaikh, Gill Cleeren, John Garland, Dan Wahlin, Roy Dallal, Microsoft Expression and Laurant Bugnion.
Earlier in December 2010, I posted three articles on DataGrid titled as "Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView", "Filtering Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView" and "Paginating Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView". If you didn't read them, go thru each articles to know more about Silverlight DataGrid.
One of my reader "Dan" asked me to write an article on "Group Row Header customization of Silverlight DataGrid" and here is that article for you. If you want to do UI customization of Row Group Header, this article will definitely help you. Here, I will show you how to modify the XAML to add different content to create a multi level row group header too.
Do you work with Child Window in Silverlight and want to customize the look & feel to match with your application UI? Then this post will help you to understand the process. I am going to discuss with you the customization steps in detail, so that, next time when you want to modify your Child Window UI, you will find it very useful.
In this article, I will guide you through the steps of customization with the help of a sample application. We will need Microsoft Expression Blend for the full customization. Read the complete article to learn about it.
On 11th November, I declared a Contest to giveaway a Developer License of Telerik RadControls for Silverlight which costs around $799. The contest ended on 25th December 2010 and as mentioned, I am going to announce the Winner of this contest in this post today.
I got a huge response in this contest and it was very difficult for me to chose the Winner but finally the Winner’s name is in my hand. Read to know who among of you will receive the $799 of Telerik RadControls License.
In some case, we need to customize the Scrolling functionality in Silverlight depending upon the requirement. The default look of ScrollViewer doesn’t give proper UI effect. In such case, you need to create the whole scroll behavior by modifying XAML and writing a bunch of C# code.
In this article, I will demonstrate you how to create the above scrolling functionality simply without writing any lines of C# code. You have to use only Expression Blend to create the richness of the Scrolling. Read more to learn about it.
If you want to Win it, read the complete post for details. Share this information to all your friends by tweet, mail or blog. Hope to see one of you as the Winner. All the best… 
In all of my earlier articles on Silverlight Out-of-Browser (OOB) applications, I demonstrated you creating the OOB application using Visual Studio. There are plenty of steps you have to follow there. Today I found another way to change the settings for it.
In this post, I am going to discuss about both the processes and at the end tell me which one is best & simple.
In my previous post “Introduction to Shapes in Silverlight 4” I introduced you with various types of Shapes available in Silverlight 4 and informed you that, I will post an article describing each one of them and here it is.
In this article, I am going to describe you about each shapes and the process to add them in our application (whenever you need). This article is for the Beginners, who don’t know much about the shape controls. If you have any suggestions/concerns please use the feedback section to let me know.
