UX Confidential

Window 8 Design Resources

Looking for some Windows 8 design resources? Luckily Microsoft has provided designers and developers a plethora of information. Here are a few to get you started.

Windows 8 UX Guidelines

Making Great Windows Store Apps

Design Assets for Windows Store apps

Code Mastery Is Coming To Chicago!

Windows 8 has been released to manufacturing so now is the perfect time to start thinking about bringing your own apps to Microsoft's next generation platform.

Join Magenic for Code Mastery Chicago on September 12 at Microsoft in Downers Grove for a day of informative presentations on development, data and design. Yours truly will be talking about "metro-fying" existing iOS and Android mobile apps to get them ready for Windows 8!

Registration is free!

Windows Phone 7 Boot Camp Training

Local Microsoft evangelist Dave Bost has a blog entry about Windows Phone 7 Boot Camps being held in various cities throughout Sept: http://davebost.com/blog/2010/08/31/windows-phone-7-boot-camp-training/ 

If you're interested in bringing your Silverlight or XNA skills to the Windows Phone platform, this is a great opportunity to learn more. 

UPDATE 2: You can register for the Chicago events here and here.

Dave Bost at The Chicago Silverlight Users Group

 
Dave Bost discusses Windows Phone development at The Chicago Silverlight Users Group.
 

MIX It Up! at The Chicago Silverlight Users Group (Updated)

There was a lot of buzz and a number of great announcements at last month's MIX10 event in Las Vegas, especially around Windows Phone 7 and one of its development platforms, Silverlight.

Register now and join The Chicago Silverlight Users Group this Wednesday, April 7th at 6pm where we'll review and discuss announcements and demo content from MIX10, including Windows Phone 7!

The Chicago Silverlight Users Group meets on the first Wednesday of each month and focuses on Microsoft Silverlight, WPF and XAML design and development.

If you have any questions or comments about The Chicago Silverlight Users Group, send an email to: [email protected]

Date: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (CT) 

Location: The Illinois Technology Association, 200 S. Wacker Drive, 15th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606

UPDATE: You can view all the videos and presentations from MIX10 here: http://live.visitmix.com/videos

Microsoft MVP Award x2

I was thrilled to discover last night that I have received my second Microsoft MVP Award for Expression Blend. This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. 

I spend a lot of time speaking and evangelizing Expression Blend, Silverlight and WPF with the design and technical communities and it's amazing for Microsoft to recognize these efforts. The way that Microsoft has opened itself up to designers is incredible. That they have provided game-changing tools for desingers to collaborate more effectively with developers is nothing short of amazing.

I feel very fortunate to be a part of such a great community.

See The Light With Silverlight 3!

Today marks the launch of Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression 3! 

I am probably most excited about the release of the Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow RC. SketchFlow is a visual tool that provides designers and developers a quick and powerful way to sketch and prototype rich, desktop and web applications with Expression Blend. I'll be talking about SketchFlow a LOT in the coming weeks!

Don't miss all the exciting announcements over at: http://www.seethelight.com

Also, here are some links to get started with Silverlight 3 and Blend 3 right now:

Silverlight 3 RTW

Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow RC

Microsoft® Silverlight™ 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Silverlight Toolkit

Microsoft .NET RIA Services July 2009 Preview

Update: Tim Heuer just posted a link to some cool Silverlight Themes to help you get started: 

Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview Now Available

Along with the release of the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Betas, comes the June preview of Expression Blend 2.5.

I am eager to install and test these new bits as Control Skinning has made its way to this version! I will be posting a review and thoughts on this new release after I have spent a few days with it. A list of known issues can be found here.

BTW, I still only recommend these betas for Silverlight 2 development. If you're working with WPF apps, stick with the RTM version of Blend 2.

Exporting XAML from Photoshop & Illustrator

From the mailbag…

John B. of Chicago asks: I am a UI designer that is interested in exploring XAML, WPF and Silverlight. Is there a way I can leverage my current set of tools (Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks) when working with Expression Blend, or do I need to start using Expression Design?

As a vector and raster graphic design tool, Expression Design is a great companion to Blend and it offers some advanced options and features when exporting artwork to XAML. But thankfully you don’t have to forgo years of Illustrator experience to get your designs into Blend.

There are several free plug-ins available that let designers export their existing files, artwork and layouts to XAML from industry-standard design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks:

• Michael Swanson offers a free plug-in that enables export from Adobe Illustrator to WPF and Silverlight compatible XAML. You can download his AI to XAMLExport plug-in here.

• Psd2Xaml from flowlabs.net is a free open-source tool for converting Photoshop .PSD files to XAML. Psd2Xaml saves vectors and layout data as in XAML and creates a folder containing the bitmaps from the PSD file. As a bonus, it also supports limited .SWF conversion to XAML.

• For Fireworks users, the Infragistics Fireworks to XAML Exporter is an extension that allows you to easily convert artwork created in the Fireworks to XAML.

 Thanks for your question, John.

Microsoft Expression Studio 2 Ships!

In case you missed it, Microsoft Expression Studio 2 shipped on May 1st. The suite offers new versions of Expression Web, Blend and Design as well as updated versions of Expression Media and Encoder. New features include Blend support for asp.net 3.5 and better integration with Visual Studio. In addition Expression Encoder is now a core offering of the suite.

If you're like me, you've probably been using the Expression 2 betas since last year, so getting these final upgrades are a no-brainer.