Blend for Visual Studio 2013

Software development in order to make designers and programmers "parallel" work and directly involved in the development of the program.

1, in the Network program development team, after the sketch design, designers can use HTML, CSS, JavaScript directly generated UI, the programmer in the UI, while the implementation of the logic behind it.

2. In the desktop development of WPF, Microsoft has created a new development language xaml--Extensible Application Markup Language. It has played a html+css+javascript role in the development of desktop and rich media network programs, and has become a hub for communication between designers and programmers.

Now, designers and programmers work together to maintain the version of the software, but they use different tools-—— designers use blend (one of the Microsoft Expression Design Toolkit) to design the UI, and the programmer uses Visual Studio to develop back-end logic code.

Blend works much like Photoshop and other design tools, so you can maximize your designer's expertise. Using it, designers can create a colorful static UI, and let the UI contain animations. While programmers can make these things, they are clearly not available in terms of professionalism, time overhead, or technical requirements. More importantly, these gorgeous UI and animations are saved directly into the project as XAML, and can be compiled directly without conversion, saving a lot of time and money.

3. Blend for Visual Studio 2013

Blend for Visual Studio has long been the primary tool for WPF developers. The software has long been marketed as a standalone product separated from Visual Studio and belongs to the expression suite. Starting with Visual Studio 2012, Blend for Visual Studio was published as a bundled app for Visual Studio. Unfortunately, the first iteration of the Blend for Visual Studio discards the XAML developer, with a full focus on the people who are using Html/javascript to develop Windows 8 applications.

This is a foregone conclusion, and the blend for Visual Studio 2013 is now re-providing help to the XAML developer.

The following sections describe many of the features of the blend for Visual Studio 2013 in detail, and here are some of the key benefits of the tool.

Complete control of the UI in a compact layout. The ability of Blend for Visual Studio 2013 is far beyond the XAML capabilities of Visual Studio. Although I am not a UI designer, blend for Visual Studio 2013 makes my UI more beautiful and faster than Visual Studio (both in terms of design and in the XAML schema of Visual Studio).

You can easily add animations, gradients, and styles to applications/pages.

Ability to quickly add status to pages (for updating layouts) and status records.

The ability to view pages through many layout and shape factors (which is much like an emulator, but cannot run the page--winjs/html developers can still benefit).

In addition, Visual Studio and blend for Visual Studio 2013 also keep the files in sync. If you use both tools to open a project at the same time, when you change (and save) the app/page in one program, another program prompts you to reload the project. You should make sure that the changes are saved because the changes are made at the same time in both programs and no saves can cause concurrency problems.

To open a project in blend for Visual studio

Visual Studio and blend for Visual Studio can work very well together. To open a project in Blend for Visual Studio, right-click the. sh file in the WPF project, open it, and select the "Blend for Visual Studio 2013" option to open it.

The screen will display the following screen

Many windows appear on the screen, but at least in the default layout (which is much like visual Studio, you can adjust the layout as needed). These layout elements are described in detail below.

Project, assets, status, and Devices tabs

The upper-left corner of the window has the project, assets, status, and Devices tabs, and the following are the functions of the tabs.

The Projects tab displays all the files in the solution (much like Solution Explorer in Visual Studio). There are no particularly important features.

The Assets tab lists all the assets that can be added to the page. You can see it as an enhanced Visual Studio toolbox. Use this tab to add (and change) styles, actions, and media, in addition to adding controls and panels to a page.

Use the Status tab to add Visual state Manager XAML code and visual state groups to a page. You can also easily add transitions to visual states using this tab.

Use the Devices tab to change the solution, direction, and connection boundaries (these are described in more detail later in the chapter). You can also use this tab to change the theme (between light and dark) and the minimum width.

Objects and Time lines

The Objects and Timeline panel (lower left corner) contains a document outline that you can use to add and modify storyboards (used with the visual state manager).

Page designer, markup, and code

The central area of the workspace is the designer and code Editor. Like Visual Studio, you can use a split view to view all your designs or tags. You can also load code files into the central pane. When you get features like IntelliSense, you can't use all of the powerful features of Visual Studio, such as navigation and refactoring. In addition, you cannot use plugins that are already installed in Visual Studio, such as Telerik Justcode.

Properties, resources, and Data tabs

The right side of the workspace is the properties, resources, and Data tabs, and here's what they do.

I've spent a lot of time studying the Properties tab. In addition to simple items such as name layout and properties such as width and height, there are a number of properties that are difficult to set manually in markup. Use the Properties panel to set options such as brushes, transformations, and interactivity.

The Resources tab contains all the application and page-level resources, as well as options for editing and adding resources.

Use the Data tab to set up the data Environment for a page, create sample data, and various data resources. Use this tab to help you watch the appearance of the page after you add data at design time, without having to observe it every time you run the application.

Blend for Visual Studio is an extremely powerful tool that takes up a full book if it is described in detail. When I develop my application, I open both Visual Studio and blend for Visual Studio, and switch between the two tools as needed to do the work. Explore the blend for Visual studio to find the right features for your project.