Silverlight resources for designers
When I am training Silverlight I am often asked by designers how to find resources on Silverlight/XAML/Expression, so here is a post for them:
First you can find lots of Expression Studio videos training in the new Microsoft videos portal:
www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/categories/products/expression
Lynda.com provides videos training on Expression Blend and Expression Design:
- Expression Blend Beta Preview (3 hrs)
- Getting Started with Expression Blend (3 hrs)
- Getting Started with Expression Design (6 hrs)
Expression Design tutorials on the Microsoft Expression Team blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/pages/samples-and-tutorials-gallery-expression-design.aspx
Here are some XAML exporters to help you do Silverlight with your assets from Adobe tools:
- Illustrator AI to XAMLExport
- Photoshop Psd2Xaml
- Infragistics Fireworks to XAML Exporter
The fantastic NibblesTutorials website (Expression Blend):
www.nibblestutorials.net
This blog post collect free Silverlight controls and tools available on the net:
www.webresourcesdepot.com/free-silverlight-controls-and-tools-for-brighter-websites/
And finally this interesting blog:
www.designwithsilverlight.com
Also as a designer you NEED to know about the Expression Professional Subscription, for a very good price ($999 USD) you get:
- Expression Studio 2
- Visual Studio 2008 Standard
- Windows Vista Business
- Windows XP SP2
- Office Standard
- Office Visio Professional
- Pre-configured virtualized server environments (VPC)
- Virtual PC (to use the VPC)
- Parallels Desktop for Mac (a 3rd party application to run Windows OS on Apple hardware concurrent with OSX)
So typically if you are a MAC designer with no Microsoft platform tools you get everything you need to get started and create awesome user experience applications with Silverlight!