A Photosynth of Neil Gaiman’s Library

A well composed Photosynth can offer an interesting way to explore 3D space. Even better when the content is as interesting as the method of exploration. Above is a distorted view captured from the Neil Gaiman’s Library Photosynth which allows you to explore the personal collection of the author.

Normally I would enjoy just browsing the shelves, but I also enjoyed the timeliness of the discovery. Tonight I was discussing Coraline with my daughter who mentioned “Coraline kind of got lucky in the end. Without the help of the talking cat she would have been in trouble.”

The nosy voyeur and the father are happy, now on to the Silverlight side. I only found about all this from a single tweet by Mr. @neilhimself.

You can follow through the reply links to find that Neil was discussing that the Photosynth was running via Silverlight and that @damonbuxton was not happy about it.

As a “Silverlight guy”, it felt good to see one of my favorite authors choose not to discriminate against the technology for the sake of it being something you have to download, if you don’t already have it.

And now I want to go to the store and pick up The Graveyard Book…

Expression Blend Twitter List

Twitter List mania has arrived just in time for Halloween! Thank goodness.

The new List functionality is actually pretty interesting. It allows you to group Twitter accounts,  so you can quickly glance at the sub groups of all the people you are following. Additionally it provides a shareable URL you can use as recommended reading list.

As an Expression Blend enthusiast, I’ve created an Expression Blend Twitter List of people on Twitter that talk about Blend and could prove useful to those interested in learning more about the tool.  This is a great way to expose some of the hidden diamonds in the rough.  I can’t believe @unnir only has 18 followers, right now. I’m sure that will change…

Who do you think am I missing from the list? I’m looking for people that frequently talk about Blend and have knowledge to share about the tool.

Expression Blend Feedback Forum

Impressed by the turn out and great feedback on the Silverlight Feedback Forum, I thought it was about time Expression Blend had a community focused way of tracking feature requests. If you requests about Expression Blend please add them to the Expression Blend Feedback Forum.

I’ve added the first five that came to mind to help start brainstorming ideas:

• Add Guides and Guide Layers
• Show Selection when an Element is Created
• Copy visual from the Artboard and paste in XAML
• Add "Auto-load changes, if saved" Documents Option
• Add Tool Properties

One thing to remember about these suggestions, is that Blend is a design tool for the WPF and Silverlight platform. And even though the team can create awesome additions (like Behaviors), they are dependant on platform functionality.

Feel free to add your own suggestions and share your ideas on Expression Blend!

10 Expression Blend 3 Tutorials for Silverlight available for download

The 10 tutorials from the Eyes of Blend series on Project Rosetta site are now available for download in both Word and PDF format. The .zip files also contain source code for the starter projects  and resource files if appropriate. One thing that’s been useful in developing these web tutorials is that I’ve been able to reuse them as demos for talks and now downloadable labs to run offline.  The next format I’m planning will be screencasts, most likely for the more visual demos.

As for using them as demos, they are a good start but need a little extra oomph to work well during a talk.  Adding in the sample behaviors from the Expression Blend Sample Pack is a great way to demonstrate Behaviors as an extensible platform and Blend as an extensible tool.  Very cool stuff going on in the Expression world and I’m looking forward to sharing the next set of tutorials and samples.

	1. Drawing an emoticon in Expression Blend First steps in getting to know the tools and workspace in Blend		Download Word, PDF
	2. Element Transformations Learn to use Scale, Rotate, Skew and 2.5D Transformations		Download Word, PDF
	3. Get Started with Animation A Quick Overview on Creating Time-Based Animations		Download Word, PDF
	4. Playing Video with the MediaElement Using the flexible MediaElement control as a reusable Surface		Download Word, PDF
	5. Arranging Pictures to Learn Layout Use the Grid, StackPanel, ScrollableViewer and Border to position Images		Download Word, PDF
	6. A Look at Text in Silverlight Learn about Displaying Text, Font Properties and Embedding Fonts		Download Word, PDF
	7. Import an Adobe Photoshop File into Blend Convert the assets from a Photoshop file into Interactive Controls		Download Word, PDF
	8. Styling and Skinning Controls Customize the Look by Setting Properties and Building Templates		Download Word, PDF
	9. Styling and working with Design-Time Data Explore how Templates and Bindings are used to display dynamic data		Download Word, PDF
	10. Giving Behaviors a Test Drive A brief overview and walkthrough of the Behaviors included with Blend		Download Word, PDF

 

New Tutorial: Import an Adobe Photoshop File into Expression Blend

While preparing my demos for the European ReMix Tour (photos), I realized that I was missing an important tutorial in the Through the Eyes of Expression Blend series. One of the great features added in Blend 3 was the ability to Import Adobe Photoshop and illustrator files. I put together a quick Login screen in Photoshop and created an Import demo for my talks.

Today I’ve posted the beginning steps of that demo as a tutorial focused on importing assets from a Photoshop file and easily turning them into controls, such as the TextBox and CheckBox.

This turned into one of my favorite walkthroughs because I think it really highlights how much easier Blend can make tasks like Template creation and editing. And that applies for Developers as well as those doing Interaction Design.

You can find the tutorial on the Project Rosetta site: Import an Adobe Photoshop File into Blend

Silverlight User Groups – Roll Call

While I’m sitting here preparing for the presentation at the Seattle Interact group tonight, I’m trying to recall the different Silverlight User Groups that I know of. After the massively re-tweeted announcement about the L.A. based Silverlight group yesterday and the just getting started Redmond-based group, I’m wondering how many other new groups have popped up since I last looked.

(I’m also trying to come to terms with the SLUG moniker that is bound to keep popping up…)

Here’s the list that of active groups that I have:

• Australia
  • Sydney, Melbourne Silverlight Designer and Developer Network
• Belgium
  • Belgian Silverlight User Group
• Bulgaria
  • Bulgaria User Group
• Canada
  • Toronto, ON Toronto Silverlight User Group
• Japan
  • Japan Silverlight User Group
• Netherlands
  • Silverlight and Expression User Group
• New Zealand
  • Wellington Silverlight Group
• Portugal
  • XAML PT Group
• United Kingdom
  • London – UK Silverlight Group
  • Birmingham, Manchester, Oxford, Southampton – NxtGenUG
• United States
  • Birmingham, AL – Silverlight Nights
  • Phoenix, AZ – Arizona Silverlight SIG
  • Los Angeles, CA – Los Angeles Silverlight User Group
  • Atlanta, GA – Silverlight Atlanta
  • Jacksonville, FL – Jacksonville Silverlight User Group
  • Chicago, IL – Chicago Design & Developers User Group
  • Ann Arbor, MI – Michigan Interactive Designers
  • Bloomington, MN – Twin Cities Silverlight User Group
  • Portland, OR – Portland Silverlight User Group
  • Vienna, VA – Capital Area .NET Silverlight Special Interest Group
  • Bellevue, WA – Seattle Design & Developers User Group
  • Redmond, WA – Silverlight Developers Association

Do you know of another group? Are you interested in starting one?

An early look at the new Project Rosetta tutorial site

One of the projects I’m working on this year is the revitalization of the Project Rosetta site. The goal of the site is to provide tutorials for designers and UI developers demonstrating how to use existing skills with new technologies.

The first version of the site was published last year with a series on Flash to Silverlight. The content has since been outdated and originally limited as it was written against Silverlight 2. Version 3 of Silverlight provides more functionality for tutorials written on design, interactivity and experimentation.

Although the new Flash to Silverlight series is not available yet (planned for late October), I did want to share some of the progress made so far.

You will now find the Project Rosetta site at it’s new home as a Lab on MIX Online.

And, we’ve published an set of tutorials called Through the Eyes of Blend:

This series of tutorials provides an overview of the Silverlight platform through the eyes of Expression Blend.

This allows the reader to learn about the features of Silverlight by simply drawing, resizing, dragging and dropping elements on the design surface of Blend. No code or prior Silverlight knowledge needed.

Try the new tutorials and let me know what you think. The next set of tutorials will be using a similiar visual style. Then once the Flash to Silverlight series has been completed we will be moving on to the experimental image effects space.

If you’d like to be involved in contributing, please send me an email with details on the type of content you’d like to write about.

How to Share Workspaces in Blend 3

Let me start with a disclaimer that this is not a fully supported feature in Blend 3. This post describes how to share the workspaces manually and by bravely editing the config file. Proceed with care or not at all.

Adjusting and customizing workspaces is a new feature in Blend 3 and is not surprisingly quite useful. Blend comes with two default workspaces, Design and Animation, that are useful for standard purposes. The desire to share workspaces for me came from the fact that I’ve started working with two other workspaces.

• Simple – This workspace can be useful for those just learning Blend and Silverlight. Some of the more detailed platform centric panels have been removed.  The remaining panels have been reorganized to provide a little more focus on the Artboard and natural flow into Animations.
• Demo1024 – This workspace is designed to fit within the 1024×768 resolution normally used when projecting your screen to an audience. Most of the panels are still available like the default Design workspace. And when discussing the tree of Objects, I’ve found it easier to resize the panel on the fly vertically rather than horizontally.

Now let’s pretend for a second you’re interested in using these workspaces.  You could just build a workspace based on the screenshots and rebuild them on every other machine you plan to use them on.

Or you could just copy and paste the workspaces with a few manual steps:

1. Download the Blend 3 Simple and Demo1024 workspaces
2. Close Blend if its currently open
3. Ensure you have the folder option for Show hidden files turned on.
4. In Windows Explorer navigate to C:\Users\*yourname*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Expression\Blend3\Workspaces
5. Copy the “Simple.default.xaml” and “Demo1024.default.xaml”, from step 1, into the Workspaces folder
6. In Windows Explorer navigate to C:\Users\*yourname*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Expression\Blend3
7. Open the user.config file with Notepad and find this element near the end:
   <PrimitiveObject Name="ActiveWorkspace">Design</PrimitiveObject>
8. After the element from step 7, add this element:
   <PrimitiveObject Name="UserWorkspaces">Simple|Demo1024</PrimitiveObject>
9. If you’ve done this correctly, the last four lines of your config file should read:

      <ConfigurationObject Name="WorkspaceService">
         <PrimitiveObject Name="ActiveWorkspace">Demo1024</PrimitiveObject>
         <PrimitiveObject Name="UserWorkspaces">Simple|Demo1024</PrimitiveObject>
       </ConfigurationObject>
   </ConfigurationService>

10. Save and close the user.config file.
11. Open Blend and navigate to Windows –> Workspaces and on the sub menu you should find two user-defined workspaces named Demo1024 and Simple.

Speaking on Designer/Developer workflow tools with Ryan Stewart on Oct 21

Since its inception, the Seattle Interact group’s goal has been to talk about designer and developer integration topics without a specific technology bias. The experiment has been interesting, but this October we are putting the idea to a true test. Ryan Stewart, a Platform Evangelist from Adobe and myself, a Silverlight and Expression Evangelist from Microsoft, will be discussing the tools available to improve the D2D Workflow.

Here’s the abstract from the site:

Designer and Developer Workflow
Is it a myth? Marketing lingo? Or could it be real with the help of powerful tools?

Listen in as Ryan Stewart from Adobe and Adam Kinney from Microsoft discuss the workflow concept from their respective point of views. Ryan will demonstrate how Flash Catalyst works within the Flash Platform development cycle. Adam will show how Expression Blend fits into the Silverlight development workflow.

I’m looking forward to the event and expect it to be an interesting session. We’ve both agreed to play nice and not have a “feature show-off” competition, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a few jabs here and there.

A fresh start for AdamKinney.com

For the last four years, I’ve been hosting my own blog software or a permutation of some sort. Although this endeavor has been fun and educational, I’ve always used my own or experimental code resulting in a lot of time maintaining the system. I’ve decided to take a break and transfer that energy spent on the content engine and apply it to the actual content.

I now have three hosted main outputs on the web:

• My Blog – Technical posts mainly focused on Silverlight and Expression. I’m current spending my time creating content for Designers and UI Developers, along with speaking engagements and community news.
• My Posterous – I’m calling this “Adam Kinney Unfiltered” because I use it to post almost daily instances of graphics, video, audio, music and animation that catches my eye.
• My Twitter – This is where I update my status, share links and follow along with the rest of the world.

So nooowwww, I should have more time to create and publish all of the content that’s been bouncing around in my head.

Very excited am I.