DotNetDevNet: Xamlathon Live '10

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Last night I presented for the DotNetDevNet group at the University of West England. The title of my talk was Xamlathon Live '10 - mostly a bunch of tips for Expression Blend.

It was great fun - I really love presenting for this group. They're a great bunch and I always enjoy going for a beer afterwards.

As promised - here are the bits and pieces from the presentation:

The last demo blew due to a silly typo but I managed to fix it before everyone went home (but after they'd completed their evals!). The reason for the break was a typo in my AnimateValue user control that manually applies the animation. The commented line shows what it *should* be:

private void ValueChanged()
{
    DoubleAnimation da = new DoubleAnimation();
    da.To = this.Value;
    da.EasingFunction = new BackEase();
    da.Duration = new Duration(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(300));
    Storyboard sb = new Storyboard();
    Storyboard.SetTarget(da, this.ProgressBar);
    // A good case for not calling controls by their class name? This is what it *should* have said:
    //    Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(da, new PropertyPath(ProgressBar.ValueProperty));
    Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(da, new PropertyPath(ProgressBar.Value));
    sb.Children.Add(da);
    sb.Begin();
}

This was easily spotted by running the project under the Visual Studio debugger which took me right to the erroneous line. Another tip (Bing!).

Now, for the 'deal' I talked about. If, enough of you express an interest by leaving a comment below - I'll work the whole session into a series of blog posts that walk you through the entire demo step by step. This will take a lot of my time and therefore I want to be sure there's enough interest to warrant it.

Thanks again

Tags: Blend Silverlight

Post By Josh Twist
4:55 AM
21 Jan 2010

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Comments:

Posted by Steve Clements @ 21 Jan 2010 5:21 AM
Great presentation...I would like to see the series of blog posts walking through the demo!
Thx

Posted by Lubos @ 21 Jan 2010 5:28 AM
Yes pleeeeeeeeeeeease.

Posted by The Supremes @ 21 Jan 2010 5:33 AM
I was at at the DotNetDevNet, I thought it was a fantastic presentation and it would be a shame if everyone who wasn't there (eg, most of the English speaking world) didn't get to see some of the process behind it.

Cheers!

Posted by Trystan @ 21 Jan 2010 6:24 AM
Enjoyed your presentation, wish I could remember more detail on your blend trickery! I would luuurve to see this blend goodness in a series of blog posts. About to start a job doing lots of silverlight so would be really handy!

Posted by Ben Paul @ 21 Jan 2010 6:40 AM
Hi Josh,

Many thanks for the fantastic demonstration of the capabilities of Expression Blend.

I would love to see a series of Blog posts about the presentation if you can spare the time!

Posted by Stephen Cleary @ 21 Jan 2010 7:44 AM
I'd like to see it; there aren't too many designer-oriented Blend resources out there. The PowerPoint slides didn't go into enough detail. ;)

Posted by Diego @ 21 Jan 2010 8:15 AM
Josh, your presentation was inspiring: you made working with Blend so easy and exciting!
It would be good (for us mere mortals) to see step by step what you actually did and try to emulate you. Thanks! (Too much flattery???)

Posted by Jose Simas @ 21 Jan 2010 9:19 AM
Hi,

Another ++ vote and congrats for a very funny and content packed presentation. I wish I had a video of the presentation!

It is a huge amount of work to translate the presentation into blog posts but the fact is that there aren't that many Blend resources out there that go beyond the obvious. I hope you get the time to do it.

Thanks!

Posted by Nathan @ 21 Jan 2010 11:58 AM
Loved the presentation Josh, especially the schizophrenic designer/developer.

Please turn the talk into blog posts, I'd especially like a step-by-step of the gauge creation as that was the second time I've seen you do it and I still can remember what you do.

When are you coming back for another talk?

Posted by mthornal @ 25 Jan 2010 3:42 AM
Great presentation, very entertaining and informative. Would be great to have the blog posts as a resource for Silverlight pros. Until the design community really embraces Expression Blend we as developers are going to need all the help we can get!

Posted by iSpeakGeek @ 26 Jan 2010 2:37 AM
Blog! Blog! Blog!

Have enough of us asked yet? ;)

Got a lot of value out of the presentation - thanks Josh!

Posted by Josh @ 26 Jan 2010 2:39 AM
Getting there :)

Thanks everyone. I'm certainly tipping toward thinking this is worthwhile.

Ta

J

Posted by Jose Simas @ 28 Feb 2010 2:35 AM
It would be easier for you if you created a video of the Xamlathon. Nothing fancy, just a basic one would be very helpful.

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