design-time writer’s block

I’ve started a new blog called design & develop which has a broader focus. From here on in I’ll be posting there. Enjoy!

If you happen to be stuck using VS 2010 Beta2 for Silverlight 4 Beta development, and are experiencing crashes while editing or debugging C#, this quick tip is for you.

Disable the new Highlight References feature in
Options->Text Editor->C#->Advanced.

Although handy, it was apparently one of the buggier features in Beta2. Thanks @pilchie.

I finally had a chance to explore Expression Blend’s Interactivity SDK a bit and put together a simple HelloWorld app using it with Blend 3.

At the center is a rough custom Behavior that is able to share the visual state of controls that are bound to the same data object. Once the behavior was functional, I simply needed to add the behavior to two Buttons, bind the buttons to the same data, and wire an event to trigger the state change.

<Button MouseEnter="enterHandler" MouseLeave="leaveHandler">
  <i:Interaction.Behaviors>
    <local:SharedVisualStateBehavior Source="{Binding}" />
  </i:Interaction.Behaviors>
</Button>

private void enterHandler(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
  SharedVisualStateBehavior.GoToSharedState(
    (Control)sender, "MouseOver");
}
private void leaveHandler(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
  SharedVisualStateBehavior.GoToSharedState(
    (Control)sender, "Normal");
}

Because of the need to call a static method to actually make use of it, meaning it’s not selfcontained, it doesn’t really qualify as a Behavior.  The ideal SharedVSM would be able to take input in the form of VisualState parameters and possibly a trigger, in order to notify the shared controls of state changes.  It’s a work in progress.

Thanks to Kuler for the theme, Josh Smith for ObserveableObject from MVVM Foundation, and Pete Blois for BindingListener from Expression Samples.

Lots of releases this month; Silverlight 3, Blend 3 with Sketchflow, and an updated Deep Zoom composer all shipped. Windows 7 is around the corner and Wpf4 is in the pipe. It’s a great time to be working in UX.

Downloads
Silverlight 3 Dev Tools – Web Installer
Expression Blend 3
Deep Zoom Composer
Silverlight Toolkit
Expression Blend Samples

Noteworthy Sites
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
Thirteen23’s TED Player
IdentityMine
Microsoft
Silverlight.net

As of this morning, downloads are published for the Silverlight 3 Runtime, SDK, Tools and Blend.

Blend
Silverlight 3 Runtime
Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
SDK

Looking forward to exploring the new features and changes.