Check Out The New Pattern (XAML+CS) Library!

Creating great looking and functioning applications is tough. It requires having a good eye for design, but it also requires some technical knowledge about how to make the design functional.

As you can probably guess, it is our goal to help you use Expression Blend, Visual Studio, and our related tools to create those great applications. We spend a great deal of time adding new features and making existing features better to help you do just that. Making improvements to the applications is only one side of how we try to help you create great applications, however.

The other side involves helping you better understand how to actually create great applications, and we try our best to provide some valuable training resources. Some notable shoutouts include the .toolbox and the Expression Community sites. While looking at videos or reading tutorials is useful, we wanted to go further and also provide you with a library of xaml+code samples that showcase something small, something specific, something cool. We felt that, in many cases, simply being able to deconstruct how something was done can be equally (if not more useful) in learning how to do something.

This library of xaml+code snippets, known better by its friends and family as the Pattern Library, lives as an extension to the Expression Gallery:

You can learn more about the Pattern Library by reading Lars Power’s newsletter article introducing it.

Please feel free to download and play with the patterns. If there is something you feel is missing, please feel to let us know or just create it yourself and upload it.

Cheers,
Kirupa =)