Somebody asked the other day how one can cut a shape in Blend. Blend doesn’t currently have a scissor tool, but Blend has a set of geometric operations that can be used for this.

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See http://www.nibblestutorials.net/ for a bunch of great tutorials with Blend. In particular, Celso just posted a tutorial for VSM. See the Blend 2.5 & Silverlight 2 section…

Here an admittedly slightly contrived example for the use of visual state manager in a user control. Imagine a little web app to show Guitar chords:

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Our goal for Silverlight 2 was to provide a control skinning model that is imminently usable for visual designers, providing an easy entry ramp, yet with sufficient power for sophisticated application skins. Our design goals did include:

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Styling dynamic visuals, or “skinning”, is an important task for visual designers working on interactive applications for web and desktops. With Beta 2 of Silverlight, and the associated June preview of Expression Blend, we are making this work much easier and faster - and we are adding more creative options at the same time.

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The supported vocabulary of user experience has been surprisingly stable over the last two decades. I believe that over the next 10 years we will experience a more exciting journey.

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In the Mix 2007 keynote, Metalliq demonstrated a video editing application under the somewhat unexpected name Top Banana. This application was based on Video Table, the outcome of a few days of casual experimentation in 2006. This post gives a short description of the idea behind Video Table, and of some of the ideas in the original prototype that were not shown in Top Banana.

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The electric beach music page, with original music for your enjoyment, is now back online.

Our daily recommendation:

• Iron Tears - Lyrics
• The Sight of an Angel - an instrumental written for my daughter Mara
• Don’t worry about the dents in your car - an instrumental

Thanks for listening…

Regards,

    CS

At Mix 08, zoom in online interviewed me about Microsoft Expression and user experience.

There is also an interview with Eric Zocher, the General Manager of the Expression Group.

Regards,
    Christian Schormann 

I make software tools for artists for a living. Today, I work on software for user experience design. Before that, my toys have been high-end video editing and compositing systems (including Jaleo, Softimage|DS, and Avid Liquid). I have also been involved with 3D animation and music software, and with an early web video effort during the first dotcom bubble.

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