Hello,
I'm starting a WPF project in a "free tools" environment. I'm currently working with the designer in Visual C# Express 2008, and directly with the XAML, both of which are very limited in design capabilities. My understanding is that Microsoft Expression Blend is not available for free (except for limited time trial).
Is Expression Blend expected to come out in a free Express version anytime soon? If not - are there any alternatives?
Thanks
I would only reccommend using Expression Blend if you are creating a very complex graphic or animation. For all other intents and purposes, stick with VS 2008. I have been studying WPF for about 3 months now, and I do not use anything other than Visual Studio. Even when I made a couple of games for my kids that had animations and the like, I didn't find the xaml editor to be at all limiting.
Of course, if you want a more light-weight xaml editor, check out Kaxaml. It's pretty efficient.
No, there is no free version of expression blend (apart from the time limited trial), and there hasn't been any announcement of anything planned.
Several useful tools are:
Kaxaml and XAMLpad for testing blocks of XAML.
StyleSnooper allows you to grab the default styles/templates from all the existing controls in the framework. Very useful if you just want to modify an existing style or template a litte.
Also, reflector has a BAML plugin available which can come in handy at times.
We have expression blend (as part of an MSDN subscription) and we barely use it. We used to use it for 2 things. 1) To grab styles, we now just use style snooper, it's easier. 2) For testing custom templates of complex controls like list views, we have now re factored the architecture slightly to generate test data when the XAML is being displayed in visual studio so we don't have to switch to blend all the time.