microsoft expression blend bible

www.it-ebooks.info Microsoft ® Expression Blend ™ Bible Gurdy Leete and Mary Leete 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page iii www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Microsoft ® Expression Blend ™ Bible 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page i www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Microsoft ® Expression Blend ™ Bible Gurdy Leete and Mary Leete 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page iii www.it-ebooks.info Expression Blend™ Bible Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard Indianapolis, IN 46256 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2007 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN: 978-0-470-05503-8 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. 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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007926001 Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Microsoft and Expression Blend are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page iv www.it-ebooks.info About the Authors Gurdy Leete is the coauthor of Macromedia Flash 8 For Dummies and four other popular books on Flash. He has also published 19 essays about the frontiers of computing, and his books on Flash have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian and Spanish. Gurdy teaches digital imaging, graphic design, Web design, video, and animation at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, where he has been a pioneer in using digital media applications in undergraduate art and design classes for 15 years. Prior to joining faculty, he worked as a 3-D animator under the direction of magician Doug Henning. Gurdy is also an award- winning graphics software engineer and user interface designer, and has worked for clients such The Learning Company, Sierra, Scott Foresman, and numerous others. He holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Film-making from the San Francisco Art Institute. Gurdy is the owner of Flying Haystacks Design, a digital media studio specializing in innovative Web design. You can view his work on the Web at www.flyinghaystacks.com, and you can reach him by email at gurdy@flyinghaystacks.com. Mary Leete was a contributing author for Fifty Fast Macromedia Flash MX Techniques, and co-wrote OpenOffice.org For Dummies. Her book Free Software For Dummies received highly favorable reviews in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. She has a B.S. in Computer Science and a Masters in Professional Writing, and lives to write code as well as write about it. Mary has extensive experience as a systems analyst and programmer with a multitude of software on way too many platforms. Mary is also a freelance Web designer and video producer, and an award-winning screenwriter, and she has written under contract for the producer of The Buddy Holly Story, among others. She’s the editor of the Web site www.interactivedesignertips.com, where you may download many of the files for the tutorials in this book, read the latest news on Interactive Designer, and more. You can contact her at mary@interactivedesignertips.com. 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page v www.it-ebooks.info Credits Acquisitions Editor Tom Heine Project Editor Katherine Dvorak Technical Editor Zach Szulaka Copy Editor Kim Heusel Editorial Manager Robyn Siesky Business Manager Amy Knies Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Richard Swadley Vice President and Executive Publisher Bob Ipsen Vice President and Publisher Barry Pruett Project Coordinator Kristie Rees Graphics and Production Specialists Denny Hager Jennifer Mayberry Quality Control Technicians John Greenough Christine Pingleton Proofreading and Indexing Aptara To the artists and designers who are adding beauty to all aspects of our world through their dedicated service to their craft. 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page vi www.it-ebooks.info W e’d like to thank the many people who supported our vision for this book and helped us every step of the way. We’d especially like to thank our wonderful acquisitions edi- tor, Tom Heine, who’s moving on to exciting new ventures, and hope very much that we’ll have the chance to work with him again. We also must thank our fantastic project editor, Katherine Dvorak, who always stayed on top of everything, and made it so much easier for us to write this book. Her superb competence and her constant helpfulness are an inspiration. And we thank our technical editor, Zach Szukala, for his outstanding work in reviewing so many details of our book so reliably and quickly, and for all his thoughtful and constructive advice. Finally, we’d like to thank our fabulous literary agent, Laura Lewin at Studio B, for all her work on our behalf. vii 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page vii www.it-ebooks.info [...]... you’ll also find that the book functions as a comprehensive reference to Blend, by thoroughly explaining how to use every important tool and component of the software We’ve designed each chapter of the book to serve as a mini reference manual for each of the most important aspects of Blend We’ve tried to design Microsoft Expression Blend Bible for anyone who is interested in creating spectacular and effective... audio-visual content Microsoft Expression Blend makes it possible for you to take advantage of the implications of this research finding, and this historic change in computing capabilities, by providing you with easy-touse, cutting-edge tools to bring Windows and Web applications to a whole new level of beauty and effectiveness using Microsoft s powerful Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Blend makes it... xxvii www.it-ebooks.info Introduction About This Book We’ve strived to make Microsoft Expression Blend Bible an information-packed, friendly guide to designing compelling, highly usable, and richly interactive user interfaces for the next generation of Windows and Web applications You may use the book as a complete guide to Blend, by proceeding step-by-step from the basics to advanced developer topics... vector objects from Expression Design as resources 189 Using Expression Design 194 Getting started with Expression Design 194 Using the tools 194 Applying colors and gradients 197 Choosing the stroke 198 Combining objects 200 Using blend modes 202 Applying filters and effects 203 Using Expression Media to Enhance... information here that interests you You can find the computer files for all the examples in this book, news about Blend, and more at our Web site www.blendtips.com You can contact Gurdy at gurdy@infinityeverywhere.net and Mary at mary@ blendtips.com We can’t provide you with technical support for Blend, but we’d love to hear your comments about the book Best of luck creating the most fabulous Windows and... — often without any programming And Blend works seamlessly with Visual Studio to make it easy for you or developers to add procedural code to the user interfaces that you create, in a seamless back and forth work flow Blend makes it easy for you to design a new generation of applications that are built to look great and take pervasive advantage of digital media Blend provides you with intensive support... Powerful Text Tools of Expression Design 279 Creating text in Expression Design 279 Using the Text palette 279 Applying strokes and fills with the Appearance palette 281 Rotating text in 3D space 282 Warping text 282 Aligning text to a path 283 Creating Superscripts and Subscripts in Design and using them in Blend 284 Considerations... Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation Flow Documents 229 Creating Flow Documents in Blend 235 Creating the FlowDocumentScrollViewer and RichTextBox in Blend 235 Adding a toolbar to the FlowDocumentScrollViewer 237 Creating a FlowDocumentReader and FlowDocument PageViewer in Blend 237 Auto Sizing your flow document viewers 238 Adding and Positioning Text, Images,... transparency, and more in Chapter 6 Learn to create and edit styles for shapes, paths, panels and controls, apply them as resources within your project, use the powerful tools of Microsoft Expression Design, and import artwork into Blend in various ways in Chapter 7 Then explore principles of graphic design that you can use to enhance your user interface in Chapter 8 Part III: Designing with Type Unless... getting bogged down in writing code Microsoft has created a simple new mark-up language, called XAML, that can specify all the details of high performance user interfaces for the next generation of Windows and Web applications, without the need for any complicated procedural computer code Blend, in a sense, is your WYSIWYG user interface for the creation of XAML code Blend, provides you with numerous . www.it-ebooks.info Microsoft ® Expression Blend ™ Bible Gurdy Leete and Mary Leete 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page iii www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Microsoft ® Expression Blend ™ Bible 01_055038. i www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Microsoft ® Expression Blend ™ Bible Gurdy Leete and Mary Leete 01_055038 ffirs.qxp 5/4/07 8:54 PM Page iii www.it-ebooks.info Expression Blend Bible Published by Wiley. countries, and may not be used without written permission. Microsoft and Expression Blend are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.