Lesson 2: Blend for Visual Studio 2012 CHAPTER 1 13
Lesson 2: Blend for Visual Studio 2012
Blend is included with Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 and helps you design your
user interface. Blend is a design complement for Visual Studio and does for design what
Visual Studio does for code. The following are some key features of Blend.
■■Visual design Edit HTML, CSS, and Windows Store controls in a “what you see is
what you get” (WYSIWYG) environment. What you see in Blend is what users will see in
Windows 8.
■■Interactive mode Design your app by changing states and setting styles. You don’t
need to compile and run continuously. Blend provides the ability to use interactive
mode so the developer can run the application on the design surface until the desired
state is reached. The developer can pause the application and then style the applica-
tion for the new state.
■■App building Windows Store controls can be dragged and dropped onto the design
surface. After that, just set the properties and styles.
■■Powerful code generation Blend takes care of all the syntax by generating concise,
reliable, predictable code when you add a style or element to your application.
■■Debugging Blend offers visual debugging of HTML and CSS. It has a virtual rule
called Winning Properties that shows you how an element obtained its effective style
from the CSS inheritance and cascade.After this lesson, you will be able to:
■■Identify the key features of Blend.
■■Start a project by using Blend.Estimated lesson time: 25 minutesExploring Blend
Blend is an exciting tool for designers and developers who will be using HTML5, CSS3, and
JavaScript to develop Windows 8 applications. Blend also supports the creation of Windows 8
Windows Store applications by using XAML with your choice of .NET programming language.
Figure 1-6 shows the New Project screen, which has the same new project templates as Visual
Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8.