I'm still playing with the new release... Sketchflow looks pretty neat, but I need to spend more time with it before I can really judge.
FWIW, I can comment on the "the ease to create more fine-grained complex interactions through predefined or extensible behaviors." First, for those who don't know what behaviors are, they are basically little bits of code that you can attach to a UI element in order to give it certain interactive capabilities without actually having to write code for that specific UI element. For example, you could have a rectangle with a mouse drag attached behavior, such that you could then drag that rectangle around when you click and drag. The beauty of this is that after you have created the behavior, you can attach it to any UI element and maintain a healthy disconnect between your UI and logic layer. There are a ton of attached behaviors out there for use, if the ones in the asset library won't do it for you. And, of course, you can and should roll your own. I've been working with behaviors for a while now and I can say that, while it does require a bit of learning to start writing your own behaviors (though it's nothing that would overwhelm anyone on this list, I don't think) they are very easy to create after that initial learning curve. And, of course, they are extremely powerful and flexible. Most importantly, they are re-usable and easily extensible. On my teams, we've created behaviors for everything from simple input validation, to complex things like object manipulation adorners (the little widgets that let you resize objects, etc). So, I'm not one to be a big cheerleader unless it's for a video game ;), but after working with attached behaviors and following the MVVM pattern for a while, I gotta admit, I'm hooked on WPF. It's extremely awesome and I highly suggest everyone check it out, if they are doing Windows development. (And I've done some Silverlight experimentation as well, which is also pretty darn cool, tbh) As a side note, I'd like to mirror Michael's comments that Blend does have a habit of doing bizarre things to projects, at times. For example, a known bug is that Blend can insert a startup window for your app, even when you don't want to have one, leading to big blank white windows on startup. For this reason, I tend to be a bit protective of my XAML/code and do a lot of my work in VS 2008 as well as Blend. For anyone interested, I HIGHLY recommend getting ReSharper for doing WPF work - it will change your "life." -AD -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Diego Moya Sent: Monday, July 13, 2009 11:44 AM To: Fredrik Matheson Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Expression Blend 3.0 with SketchFlow Released Today 2009/7/13 Fredrik Matheson <[email protected]>: > So, has anyone tried EP3 with Sketchflow? What's your experience so far? I've given EB3.0 a quick run. Everything below is the result of a very rough first impression based on few minutes of usage. On first opening, it looks very similar to several Rapid Application Development tools by Adobe to which I'm familiarized. In particular, the layout, tools and icons show a strong resemblance to the Flex IDE - down to the dark default color theme. Said that, the SketchFlow specific functions seem a very much welcome addition for prototyping work. The "SketchFlow map" is a usable state transition diagram, which is a godsend after trying to create state flows through Visio background pages. The "SketchFlow animation" panel looks at first like a highly visual comic-strip version of the Flash timeline, enhanced with an recorder that allows creating transition states by interactive demonstration. Overall it seems that it will be a really good way to create simple transition diagrams for navigating the main application or website structure, but I still remain wary about the ease to create more fine-grained complex interactions through predefined or extensible behaviors. Cheers ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
