Microsoft Expression Preview for Silverlight 5 with Sketchflow, cool

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Oh, what a weekend, a great session at DeVry University, hardworking students find out how to create and post Windows Phone Apps!  I think that XNA is the way to go for Windows Phone 7, but not everyone agrees with that opinion.  And I agree, so let’s dig into the Microsoft Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5, which doesn't support Windows Phone 7, but fits into my mood today.

Since this is a Preview product, make sure to set a System restore

First of all make a restore point (or for old guys like me, a checkpoint) on your computer before loading this preview product, a good idea anytime you load up a new package, but especially if you are installing a preview product, so open the Control Panel, System and Security and then on the left hand panel select the System Protection, you will get the System Properties dialog box shown to the right, click on the button “Create”.

Once you have set your restore point (if you don’t know how to do this, use the Help and Support, it will do a step by step), download the Microsoft Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 and install it.

This preview doesn’t support Windows Phone, you will need to download the Windows Phone SDK and install it separately (I did this installation first.)  But even if you install the SDK, the Microsoft Expression Preview for Silverlight 5 won't show Windows Phone templates since Windows Phone wouldn't support Silverlight 5.  It is likely that Windows Phone will support a subset of Sliverlight 5, it doesn't right now.

When I open new project, there aren’t any templates

Not sure why, but the templates are in the correct folders, but only the standard templates show up in the “New Project”.

I’ll keep checking on this.

So why did you write this blog?

Didn’t go where I wanted it to.  The preview didn’t have any interesting new templates and I didn’t find any new samples, the sample tab simply brought up the samples in Expression 4.

Guess I will need to implement some examples.  But really all I am interested in is Windows Phone 7.