“Express Yourself! Create and share your work with other members of the Expression Community. Get inspired. Get creative. Get noticed.”

http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

Also check out ScottGu’s demo of Expression Blend working with Silverlight 2.0.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/28/first-look-at-using-expression-blend-with-silverlight-2.aspx

You would probably only know this if you had installed the Syndicated Client Experiences starter kit or recently downloaded the latest version of the Seattle PI Reader but now the two are integrated.

Now that there is more than just the MSDN Reader in the list you can start to really see the value of this experience. I just finished rebooting after installing SP1 and noticed the little orange icon in the task tray updating. When i clicked on it to open the Subscription Center I saw that the PI had been updated and I was able to browse the most recent stories without having to commit to opening up the whole app. Clicking a title reveals a bit more information and double clicking launches the reader.

If you haven’t used the PI reader, its a great app and there are some really notable new features. For instance now you can drag articles into a “reading list” and then you can twitch navigate through that reading list… Its a very cool scenario. Spend a few minutes browsing the section fronts and add articles to the reading list (hint: you can flick them into the reading list very cool metaphor that has very low dexterity required). After you have built your reading list grab a cup of coffee and kick back and really read… I mean really read. We don’t do that very much anymore.

I do love hearing things like that… Especially in the context of what’s on the roadmap for WPF in the future.

DataGrid, HW accelerated DropShadow and Blur, better Media and Video support, WriteableBitmap and more.

Wow.. Great website using Silverlight… Cant wait to see the movie too…
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/trailers/jumper.html

I especially like how easy and fast I was watching the trailer in full screen. Just one thing… Why in the heck do we always implement the “Hit Esc to exit fullscreen”. Doesn’t anybody use this stuff? Its totally aggravating when I have to wait a few seconds with an ugly message overlaying my video that I am trying to watch. How about positioning it in an lower third of the screen. Or start up at center and immediately to the bottom of the screen..

Schweeetnesh!

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowssdk/archive/2008/02/07/windows-sdk-rtms.aspx

It looks like its official… Robby and I will be doing a session at Mix 08 this year…

https://content.visitmix.com/public/sessions.aspx

Nerd + Art: Ten Code Snippets to Empower Your Inner Artist
Speaker(s): Nathan Dunlap, Robby Ingebretsen (Identity Mine)
Audience(s): Business, Creative
Session Type: Breakout
Learn how to increase what a designer can do with Windows Presentation Foundation and Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 using our designer’s code “toolbox”-10 simple concepts that will give you an edge when making your best ideas a reality. We share the code, teach you how to use it and introduce the concepts behind it.