Expression Studio

UPDATED Microsoft Expressions Forum

JayNeu — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:40:28 GMT

The existing forum you are currently browsing will be retired and all Microsoft Expressions related thread posts should now be directed to http://social.expression.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories.

Note: You will no longer be able to add or reply to any thread in this existing forum.

Need technique to make a square radial gradient...

GearWorld — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:15:05 GMT

Hi,

Blend 3 just offer a circle radial gradient. How do I make a square one ?
Let say I have an info bull that is squared and have corner radius of 5 and want the interior to have a gradiant that make the effect of all the borders are darker a bit INSIDE ?

Importing PowerPoint to Expression Studio

nbedworth — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:02:43 GMT

What's a good way to transfer PowerPoint slides into Expression Studio 3? We'd like to bring in the design details, such as transparency, particular colors, picture and drawing effects, etc., that we've worked out in PPT, and use them to create a similar look and feel within an SL3 RIA.

I'm aware of Electric Rain's work in this area, but am under the impression that their technology is not available for trail use quite yet. Presumably we could export the PPT slide at XML or XPS; will ES be able to import these reasonably accurately?

Sketchflow Map disappeared

kellyluck — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:53:48 GMT

We're putting together a site prototype for a redesign and it's going well, getting a lot of use out of Sketchflow. Unfortunately, the other day it crashed while I was building and I had to restart. A full rebuild got it going again, but I noticed that the SketchFlow Map is now empty. I've tried zooming all the way out, Fit All, scrolling up and down and everywhere in that field, but it is simply no longer there. Any ideas as to what happened, and what I can do to bring it back?

WebRequest in designtime

SharpGIS — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:00:42 GMT

When doing a webrequest from a control in designtime in Blend, the webrequest will fail with a NotFound exception. This makes sense for Silverlight, since this is a cross-scheme access issue (http:// <=> file://).

However, the WebRequest is to a service that is used to determine how this control should render itself, and I would love to have the preview look exactly like it does at runtime. Therefore I'm hoping someone has an idea how to get around this limitation at design time. Any hack appreciated :-)

Expression Blend 3 constantly crashing

James-H — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:04:23 GMT

I'm running the Expression suite downloaded from MSDN and am finding that Blend 3 (3.0.1927.0) constantly crashes, unfortunately not in a reproducable way (not that I've found one yet). It's not as if I'm doing anything demanding, just building some usercontrols with text boxes and labels etc. It is usually crashing every 30 mins or so.

Unfortunately there isn't an auto save function or a recover tool when reopening Blend. I'm having to now save every five minutes which isn't ideal. Blend 3 Preview didn't crash as much as this.

Running on XP SP3, 32 bit.

Anyone alse experiencing this ?

James.

Going from Sketchflow to Out-of-browser

rmcsharry — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:28:27 GMT

Hi,

Re. Blend 3:

Does anyone know if there is a straightforward way to take a "Silverlight + Sketchflow project" and turn it into a "Silverlight + website project", so that I can then convert to an out-of-browser app?

I have searched and googled myself to death and cannot find the answer.

Thanks,

Richard

How to track multiple user feedback in SketchFlow?

cangelly — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:04:32 GMT

Looking for the best practice here... I would like to allow multiple users to provide feedback against a single SketchFlow project. They would also like this ability so that they could see everyone else's annotations. I realize that they could very well do this now, but is there a way to distinguish what feedback belongs to a given user?

It seems to me that there are two possible solutions, both seem a bit kludgey:

1. Single .feedback file -- Ask users to each use their own color (i.e. Tom always uses red, Sally always uses blue, etc)...or, ask users to include their initials in their feedback statements.

2. Individual .feedback files -- Publish (copy) the SketchFlow project to individual folders, one folder for each user. While this would definitely distinguish user feedback, they would not be able to see other users' feedback.

F5 - browser launches with no content to preview.

fatthippo — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:56:51 GMT

Hello,

This is my first post here. I'm entirely new to silverlight and I hope I'm just overlooking something.

I'm going through tutorials in the book "Foundation SilverLight 2 Animation". When the author asks to preview a sample project to show the example, I recieve nothing on the page when I compile and try to preview in the browser by hitting F5. Is there a setting in Blend that designates a start page or something that I'm overlooking? If I create something simple on the page it actually works and shows the content I created. It seems that it's just the sample projects that are not. The only thing different that I can tell is that it asks me to upgrade the sample projects when I open them in blend. I hit yes, otherwise blend throws an error when compiling to preview.

I'm using Blend 3 RC.

Thanks in advance!!!!

Encoder 2 - Publish to Silverlight Streaming

b1021 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:08:36 GMT

Still slowly finding my way through Silverlight Streaming and Encoder 2 - but I'm curious as if I'm adding a new video item (I'm using the reflection template so that I can have multiple video files) do I have to re-encode my entire application? Could I just change the MediaDefinition.xml to include my video files, zip them up and manually publish? I've tried a bit, but I think there is some code in the manifest.xml that I'm not sure what Encoder 2 plugin produces.

Thanks

Design effect xaml export issue

brainbox — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:46:17 GMT

With release of Silverlight 3 some of Expression Design effects are know can be exported to xaml, but there is no info in design which effects can be exported and which cannot.

Please provide a link to a document which would describe all effects which could be exported to silverlight xaml from Expression Design.

Also I'd like to ask to create Silverlight compatibility mode in future version of Epxresssion Design to ensure designer that effect he used is exportable.

Expression Blend

websyd — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:36:07 GMT

Hi,
I just want to ask if there's an express version of Expression Studio Family. If not, why ?

tnx

Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 not getting Install

suyog kale — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:35:30 GMT

hi,

i am trying to install Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 .

its giving me error:

Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 may have failed to install. Windows installer returned Error code 1605

please suggest me solution on same ASAP .

sketchflow with asp.net mvc

billsm — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:38:32 GMT

Can you use asp.net mvc with sketchflow?

Are there any good videos articles on the subject?

I saw the basic sketchflow video however they never mentioned asp.net mvc....

Thanks again

Is there any way to remove an embeded font from my file?

apalcer — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:47:24 GMT

I am having a TON of issue when it comes to SubsetFontSilverlight.targets and SubsetFontTask.dll? I can not get my project to load in expression blend 3 because it can not find this file? It is where it suppose to be, but it removes the SubsetFontSilverlight.targets and then it refuses to load the silverlight project. I WANT to get rid of the embedded font? Becuase it has caused be issues else where. Any suggestions?

Thanks

Make smooth streaming files with the Encoder SDK

Joeri Pansaerts — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:00:26 GMT

Could somebody tell me what I doing wrong ?

I don't get the 4 .ismv files. I only get 1 .wmv file

			using (Job job = new Job())
			{
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.VideoCodecPreset = VideoCodecPreset.AdaptiveStreaming;
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.DefaultFileOutputMode = FileOutputMode.IisSmoothStreamingMultipleFile;
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.FrameRate = CameraFrameRate == -1 ? mediaItem.OriginalFrameRate : CameraFrameRate;
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.KeyFrameSpacing = CameraFrameRate;
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.BufferWindow = CameraBufferWindow * 1000;
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.MbrItems.Add(new VideoProfileMbrDelta
					{
						Width = CameraStream1Width,
						Height = CameraStream1Height,
						Bitrate = CameraStream1Bitrate * 1000
					});
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.MbrItems.Add(new VideoProfileMbrDelta
					{
						Width = CameraStream2Width,
						Height = CameraStream2Height,
						Bitrate = CameraStream2Bitrate * 1000
					});
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.MbrItems.Add(new VideoProfileMbrDelta
					{
						Width = CameraStream3Width,
						Height = CameraStream3Height,
						Bitrate = CameraStream3Bitrate * 1000
					});
				mediaItem.VideoProfile.MbrItems.Add(new VideoProfileMbrDelta
					{
						Width = CameraStream4Width,
						Height = CameraStream4Height,
						Bitrate = CameraStream4Bitrate * 1000
					});
				job.MediaItems.Add(mediaItem);
				job.OutputDirectory = string.Format("{0}\\Session7\\Web\\", path);

				job.EncodeProgress += new EventHandler(OnProgress);

				job.Encode();
			}

silverlight 3 in blend 2

mrbiggs — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:06:12 GMT

is there a way to do silverlight 3 in expression blend 2

Blend crash on startup

imshally81 — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:58:51 GMT

hi guyz,

my blend crash on startup with the following message.

"Microsoft Expression Blend has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

and this is the detail description of error.....

________________________________________

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    5000
Date:        3/30/2009
Time:        10:32:39 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    development1
Description:

EventType clr20r3,

P1 blend.exe,

P2 2.1.1760.0,

P3 48ecf8ea,

P4 mscorlib,

P5 2.0.0.0,

P6 4889dc80,

P7 dd,

P8 10,

P9 system.argumentexception,

P10 NIL

__________________________________

please note that i installed the sp1 of blend ... but it still gives the same error,

i have also installed the all framework 1.1,2.0,3.0,3.5 with their updated service packz.

Any help ??????

Thanks

Sajjad

Expression Blend 3 using near 50% CPU while "idle"

M.S — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:34:21 GMT

I'm using Expression Blend 3 and periodically it will start consuming about 50 percent of my CPU, without my even touching it. When I restart Blend, it is usually ok for a little while, before it ramps up again.

I'm not using animations or really doing anything particularly exotic.

Does anyone know know of a fix?

Expression Blend 3 not working well with VS 2008 SP1

HiTech Magic — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:11:58 GMT

Hi there,

We successfully created a SketchFlow project with 5 pages and 4 controls on each, but the default class names are a problem when you go to use them as assets. "Screen_1_1" is not as useful as say "PageBanner".

You can't rename the classes inside Expression Blend (only the filenames and SketchFlow display names) so "Edit in Visual Studio" would seem to be the best option. However...

How to crash out of VS 2008 with no error message:

Inside an Expression Blend 3 SketchFlow project select a screen .cs file.
Right-click the file and select "Edit in Visual Studio".
Build the project in VS 2008 - just to make sure it is stable
Open one of the page codebehind .cs files.
Select the class name, right-click and choose Refactor | Rename
Accept the list of changes
VS 2008 exits with no warning and no changes have been made

Any thoughts on how to avoid this unexpected shutdown? We have had the odd random crash of Expression Blend 3 itself, but this problem is slowing us down us a bit.

Thanks

Localizable XAML content using Blend's data binding dialog

Casimodo72 — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:33:32 GMT

Hi,

I'm trying to evaluate multilingual support using the approach described in: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd882554(VS.95).aspx.

I defined an entry for my static LocalizedStrings class in the App's resources and now I would like to bind to a specific path on that class.

public class LocalizedStrings
{        
  public static SLApp01.Localization.StringLibrary Main
  {
    get { return LocalizedStrings._main; }            
  }
  private static SLApp01.Localization.StringLibrary _main = new SLApp01.Localization.StringLibrary();
}

<Application.Resources>
  <loc:LocalizedStrings
    xmlns:loc="clr-namespace:SLApp01.Localization"
    x:Key="LocalizedStrings" />
</Application.Resources>

<TextBox Text="{Binding Main.MyString, Source={StaticResource LocalizedStrings}}"/>

I would like to use the dialog TextBlock-->Properties-->Text-->DataBinding to bind the Text of a TextBlock to Main.MyString of my LocalizedStrings class. But Blend does not let me use the resource defined in Application.Resources via this dialog.

However Blend lets me "Define a new object data source" when clicking on the "+ CLR object" button. If I now choose my LocalizedStrings class, I'm not able to select any fields on that class, since the fields (properties) I would like to select are static; apparently those are not displayed in the dialog. A bit annoyed, I just commit the dialog and end up with the following:

<UserControl.Resources>
  <SLApp01_Localization:LocalizedStrings x:Key="LocalizedStrings" d:IsDataSource="True"/>
</UserControl.Resources>

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" DataContext="{Binding Source={StaticResource LocalizedStrings}}" >
  <TextBox Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay}"   />
</Grid>

A new resource, local to my UserControl, was generated. The DataContext was set on my Grid.

This is really not what I want.

I noticed the d:IsDataSource attached property on the generated resource entry. So I thought, maybe Blend needs that property on my original "LocalizedStrings" entry in my Application.Resources, in order to let me choose it for data binding. But apparently Blend throws an error when d:IsDataSource is used in App.xaml. Actually it throws: "App.xaml : error : XAML Namespace http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008 is not resolved".

Is there a convenient way to leverage Blend's data binding dialog for this scenario, or is writing the binding expression by hand into the XAML the recommended and supported approach?

Regards

Kasimier

Buy or upgrade ?

GearWorld — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:52:31 GMT

For Blend 3. Since I bought Blend 2. Will it be just a free upgrade to my current product or will I have to buy Blend 3 ?

Where did "Workspacezoom" go in Blend 3?

Qbus — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:51:09 GMT

In Blend 2, you had an option to "zoom/scale" the overall UI in Blend. If you for instance have a low resolution, you could make room for more, by "scaling" down the UI a little. Similar to what you can do in World of Warcraft, if that helps anybody.

Where did that feature go in Blend 3? Can't find it :S

Blend 3 à la carte?

Silveo — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:05:33 GMT

Will Expression Blend 3 be available for purchase/upgrade without buying Studio (as is the case for v2)? The product site seems to imply that it can only be had as part of the full Expression Studio suite. It would seem a bit late in the release for MS to announce that they are changing the rules for licensing the development tools. If in fact it is no longer possible to buy Blend alone, did Microsoft make this information available to developers *before* they made commitments to SL3 development? I haven't been able to find any such information, but maybe I missed it.

DropShadowEffect issue in Version 3

GearWorld — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:42:01 GMT

If I add a DropShadowEffect to a border. The contant which is a grid and all its children cast shadow and there's no option to avoid that ?
Plus I have strange States effect on my object and I don't have a clue why.

This is the same code as version 2 that was working correctly and nothing changed.

Here's a screenshot and the explaination that goes with it : http://pages.videotron.com/gear/weird.jpg

Ok each text you see is a distinct object which have a state called Over and another called Out. The Over is the little blue rectangle you see
when I hover over it which start from right to left to fill the text. Now you see a little bubble on the third text. This is what I call weird because I was going OVER and OUT rapidely on the first text and when I do this, other objects in the stack panel seems to go in OVER state but I'm just going on the first text

Sometimes I even see the entire OVER state over 2 text at once. But just hover over the first one...