Expression Blend For Programmers

He gave a us a decent run through of Expression Blend. It was basically built for designers. Blend 3.0 is in preview and is made for WPF and Silverlight 3.0 (suggests we use it). Will automatically upgrade silver light apps to silver light 3 if opened . 3.0 supports source control(TFS). Also supports code editing and intelligence.
You can create WPF or Silverlight projects from Blend. Hold shift down to expand out toolbox list as you hover over, or click last one to see all controls. You can place controls inside other controls from object browser. When you see red trim around form, means you are in story board editing mode. Expression blend has no debugging, will still have to do that in VS. You can have solution open in blend and VS at same time. Always create projects in VS to insure you get everything VS needs. Grid in Blend is what you use to fix layout of form. Use gradients to make things look better…it should be very subtle tho. Put rectangles behind objects to give them nice color changes. Use gradients at same horizontal axis for glass looking effect. If you don’t know the size of an object put itside a view box, which auto size it to size of list item. Second pointer tool to manipulate parts of an object. Once a template is created you can then right click to apply to 2nd object. I they have differences ( ie data bound) do edit copy of template to just change the binding. You can also edit the template of layout of items.