Expression Blend Training | The Coffeehouse

irascian
Irascible Ian

One of the REALLY annoying things about the Expression products is that when you click on "Training" or "Tutorials", even from within a specific application like "Blend", all it does is show you some simple tutorials for Expression Web.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BLEND SO WHY ARE YOU TAKING ME THERE DAGNABBIT?!!!

Blend can be a bit of a nightmare to get your head around, but one of my customers gave me a tip off "I wasn't impressed with Blend until I found some training on lynda.com which showed me how powerful it really is".

Lynda.com appears to be an online training resource site, with an emphasis on design tools. It costs $250/year or $25/month and once you're signed up you have access to over 220 training courses.

So I signed up and have to say the Blend training (which runs just over a few hours) is EXACTLY what I needed to get me into Blend. It shows how powerful the application is and shows how to do 3D stuff with Zam 3D and then export it to Blend so it can be used there. NB: It needs you to install QuickTime and of course a broadband connection.

All-in-all it's a great little training package - it's a shame Microsoft couldn't have done something similar to get people up to speed.

There's a ton of sites out there trying to get you to subscribe to training, but I must say lynda.com looks like one of the better ones I've come across. Your subscription fee gives you access to basic training on XHTML, Office, 3D products like 3DMax, DVD Authoring, the Adobe products, and of course the Expression products.

I've signed up and will be making use of a ton of stuff on the site. If you've downloaded "Blend" and are struggling to get into it the lynda.com training is the best introductory training I've found so far.

rhm

Thanks for the pointer. I'd heard of Lynda training, but assumed it was too expensive so didn't look at their site. I didn't realise you could have access to all their training videos for $25 a month. At current exchange rates that's next-to-nothing! Smiley

It looks like the Expression Blend beta training is available to non-subscribers at the moment - at least all the links on the contents page for it are clickable and I've not created an account yet. I expect when the final product ships they'll create a much longer programme for subscribers, but in the meantime it's great to have some introductory training available. Everyone that's interested in Expression Blend and WPF should check it out now.

dentaku

Yup, the expression Blend tutorials are just open to anyone. It looks really nice so far from what I've watched.

StevieLINQ

Another good site for Expression Blend tutorials is http://ExpressionBlend.com. The owner/creator of the site is the top tester for Expression Blend and is in close communication with the Expression Blend development team.

rhm

There might be some good content on that site, but I can't find a thing. It seems to be suffering from the web2.0 delusion that blogs full of links and tag clouds are a substitute for good organisation.

Brennon

Howdy...

As the owner of www.expressionblend.com I would like to thank you for the support as well as to apologise for the layout... I don’t get on very well with community server...

It has all gone a little nuts...

The site is due to be remodelled later this year, and has taken a step back as a priority because I have been building a network of sites that will deliver structured video tutorial content for the following products.

• Expression Blend
• Expression Web
• Expression Design
• Silverlight
• ZAM3D
• Swift V5.0
• StandOut

These sites are all being aimed towards showing designers how to build stuff with Blend being of particular focus, and importantly showing designers how to write code in the context of a UI.. in plain speak that they will understand.

The sites are coming very shortly... just putting the final touches on the framework and the WPF tutorial player!!

I am also writing the book.. “Expression Blend Unleashed” to be published by SAMS later this year (Jul-Aug), but you can pre-order from amazon.

So, lots coming to support people that need to know how to use this product, and again, the expressionblend.com site will be cleaned up as well.

Cheers

Brennon Williams

Randolpho
Hacker On Steroids

expressionblend.com is my new favorite place. Thanks Brennon!

Regarding Lynda -- I'm gonna try out the free stuff first, but if I can't get my brain around Blend (which I'm still having trouble with -- I'm a code monkey, not pict-zie!) I'll give it a go.

thebird
501st

In reply to Brennon

#Apr 27th, 2007 @ 1:12 PM

The splash page you have looks cool but nothing there at expressionblend.com right now. I'm a freelance designer in STL that has been hired by a software team looking to develop animations and cool designs for their software package. They are determined to use Blend and WPF for development and design. So far I have found very little on animation for Blend other than simple key frame animations and have run through ever tut on Lynda at least twice to familiarize myself with the program. Not to mention run down tuts even on Youtube as well as other sites.

But I still have questions.

In particular, drag and drop options for menus...or manipulation of graphic shapes....reverse key frame animations. Things that you could easily do in Flash but I can't for the life of me figure out in Blend.

Any direction you can give me on animations in Blend would be appreciated. For example….where is the option in Blend to be able to draw a rectangle and grab its side and bend it like you are able to do in Flash? If MS is going to convert Flash designers, they need to be able to easily find the tools and methods that make crowd pleasing animations. More time spent on showing these types of examples would go a long way to win over this segment of Flash users.

I'm really dedicated to learning more and more about Blend. I have ran through all the tuts over at Lynda at least twice and am hungry for more advanced techniques and tools.

Thanks

Zachary Bauer
http://www.wetinkpro.com