Why Expression Blend is so important for
Microsoft Developers
When I wrote my blog Expression Blend: A Tool Every Microsoft Developer
Must Have on June 1, 2011, trust me I wasn't smoking.
In last few years, Blend has become an essential
tool for Microsoft developers who are building rich client applications using
WPF. We have also seen lots of Silverlight applications have been designed
using Blend. In last year or so, Blend has also played a major role in Windows
Phone apps development.
Today, Silverlight is dying slow death and HTML 5
has killed it.
But that does not mean, Blend is. Today, Blend is
even more important than ever.
Now with the launch of Windows 8 and Metro Style
apps makes it one of the essential tools for developers. Microsoft Blend team
has been put some good effort to make it a designer quality product. It is not
up there with other designer tools yet but good enough to do the job. If you
plan to build metro style apps for Windows 8, Blend is the way to go. Not only
you can build XAML and C# based applications using Blend but you can also build
HTML 5 and JavaScript applications in Blend. You like or not, Microsoft is going to push Windows 8 and Metro style development really hard. Check out Metro Style app development section on C# Corner to get started.
Besides building all these apps, I personally use Blend as a UI design tool. Most of my application user interfaces are designed with the Blend. I found it much easier to work with compare to other design tools.
Visual Studio 2012 will be launched on Sept 12,
2012. So the new version of Blend. Today, Blend for Visual Studio 2012 ships
with Visual Studio 2012 RC.
Check out Expression
Studio section on C# Corner to learn more about blend and get started.
Good luck!