Presentation for Victoria Silverlight Developer Network Victoria about Extending Microsoft Expression Blend using .Net and MEF

1. Extending Expression Blend Cristian Prieto Senior Developer, Readify http://cprieto.com, @cprieto

2. Why to extend? Sometimes it doesn’t do what you use to do in other tool Maybe there’s a market for that out there, who knows! Sometimes you feel bored at home and need to code something different You because you can!

3. What can be extended? Microsoft Expression Web HTML Addins Microsoft Expression Blend Blend behaviors Microsoft Expression Encoder Publish addins

4. What Microsoft says: This is not officially supported!

5. What do I need? A .Net language, of course! MEF knowledge ICommand, Service locator pattern knowledge… maybe Reflector/ILSpy/Cecil A lot of patience!

6. Blend Extension points Officially supported Behaviors (Blend SDK) design-experience for custom controls Item and Project templates Not officially supported Everything else!

7. Blend Extension Model There are IPackage’s AddIn’s Extension’s There is a “service container/locator” IServices : IServiceProvider There is an “application context” ExpressionApplication There is a service for almost anything

8. Because you already using it, right? Introduction to MEF

9. Now what you were waiting for… Our first extension

10. Come on! Don’t be so shy! Questions?

11. Reference Reflector 7 http://reflector.red-gate.com/download.aspx ILSpy http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ilspy.ashx WPF Designer extensibility http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb546938.aspx Silverlight/WPF Designer extensibility http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/DesignerExtensbility Expression Blend Designer extensibility http://blogs.msdn.com/b/terryclancy/archive/2011/01/21/microsoft-expression-blend-4-extensibility.aspx Building extensions for Expression Blend 4 using MEF http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/75961/Building-extensions-for-Expression-Blend-4-using-M.aspx MEF project on Codeplex http://mef.codeplex.com/ (bonus track) Creating an Expression Encoder publishing plugin http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc136758.aspx