Expression Studio - v2 good enough for learning?

Question

I have VS 2008, and looking forward to moving fairly quickly to VS2010. Our applications (we only have a few) are all winforms apps - mostly VB.

I want to start to learn WPF. My version of Expression Studio is version 2. I have heard that the improvements made from version 2 to version 3 are significant. If it follows the paradigm of version 3 being the adult app (past the infancy of version 1 and the awkwardness of version 2), then I suppose it would be worth the investment to get it before starting to learn. But, unless my company was willing to pay, I am hoping to keep costs low. Can anyone share some experience - is version 2 good enough to learn on, or should I bite the bullet and smooth my learning experience by going with version 3?

Thanks!

Answer 1

What expression do we talk about? What the heck is "Expression"??

Visual Studio Express.... ...how cheap is your company not to pay for it... ...given that the price is ZERO ;)

Express version are free.

Expression STUDIO.... is not for progammmers. The Expression stuff is the design side (to be used together with programmers using Visual Studio) You won't get happy trying to program in it - better get the 2010 release candidate, or the 2008 express versions.

Answer 2

I have never used Blend, and I'm quite happily petering along with WPF right now. If you want to learn it you have everything you need in VS2008. I'm sure Blend is dead good for people making ridiculously fancy GUI designs to pass onto programmers, but its certainly nothing like a prerequisite for learning (or using) WPF to its full extent.

That said if you're dead set on using Blend I'd go for version 3 - I generally follow the paradigm that if I'm working with something every day (especially if I'm just starting out on the platform) then paying for the most helpful tools is a solid idea.

Answer 3

So I guess your basic requirement is to learn 'XAML', The tools you can use are

• Expression Blend - As a beginer Blend 2.0 is enough for you to get started with WPF/Silverlight XAML
• KaXaml is a great XAML prototyping tool, Many newcomers liked KaXAML as their first tool. Try it out - http://www.kaxaml.com/
• XAMLPadX http://blogs.msdn.com/llobo/archive/2008/08/25/xamlpadx-4-0.aspx
• And Visual Studio 2008/2010 has better XAML Designer (Where you see XAML preview)

Answer 4

If you are going to use Expression Blend, I would start off with at least version 3. The Preview for .NET4 is out, and the full version should be out shortly.

Blend is really about the designer. Almost everything can be taken care of from the designer, with only a little interaction with the code. Personally I started learning WPF (and XAML in particular) by writing straight XAML code in Visual Studio. From there, once I got the markup down pretty good, I went on to Blend, and I had a pretty firm grasp on what was happening behind the scenes.

The only way Blend would be good for you in a learning aspect (specifically learning XAML markup) is if you inspected the code after creating/editing an item. If you want to make snazzy interfaces and don't want to spend a long time doing it, Blend is your program. If you really just want to make a UI that is nicer than WinForms will allow, Visual Studio would be better.

You can get a trial version of Expression Blend 3 here. Or if you are in school, you can get a full version (thanks to the Dreamspark program) here. (sign up with your schools .edu email account.)