Silverlight development [Visual Studio 2008 vs Expression Blend]

Question

I'm a .Net developer and want to get into developing Silverlight applications. I have VS 2008 but wanted to know if I should/need expression blend. What are pros/cons of having blend along side VS?

Answer 1

I don't mean to push my own questions, but this might help you a little, especially if you are not familiar with Expression Studio or Expression Blend: "What exactly is Microsoft Expression Studio and how does it integrate with Visual Studio?"

Answer 2

Blend is very useful for designing, and its new feature of control visual states editing it can be very useful. However, the XAML it generates might be more difficult to maintain than custom written one.

Personally, I use blend whenever I need to generate a certain visual effect, and then copy the XAML into the actual solution, but in an ideal environment, you should be providing the designer with a raw XAML generated in VS, and he should edit it with Blend.

Answer 3

The major pro is that it is the visual design surface for the XAML for Silverlight. Right now, the visual design surface in VS for Silverlight is read-only. I always describe Blend as a graphical XAML editor. It is incredibly powerful for helping you to understand XAML, easily create animations that may be needed, template controls, position your application elements, etc.

Answer 4

You will want blend for prototyping animations, making templates, changing colors. I don't use it everyday, once you put in a valueconverter it renders that element unrenderable.

To do anything with Blend I create a new project in Blend, mock up what i want and cut the xaml out. So it's rare that I use it.

You don't NEED it though. Get the June preview or get it from MSDN, but dont go and buy it. If you get the preview you can use it for learning animations and xaml. After you work with xaml enough it's faster to go to the xaml and not use any of the tools.

Designers use Adobe products and Macs... So the only thing you NEED is a converter.

Answer 5

If you are going to do minimal XAML stuff then the free and excellent tool KaXAML will help you. Take a deep look here http://www.kaxaml.com/