Whether you are creating animations or transitions, designing interactions with the business layer, or prototyping an application, WPF and Silverlight provide extraordinary expressive potential. It's not always easy, though, to turn visual concepts into working code. Expression Blend, a powerful design tool from Microsoft, translates what you see on the design surface into the declarative markup language XAML, dramatically increasing your productivity as you build UI for Silverlight and WPF applications.

For developers, Expression Blend is the fastest way to build XAML-based interfaces. Period. In Blend, you work with properties, events, projects, and solutions just as you would in Visual Studio. It's a snap to import data sources, bind data elements to control properties, create animations, and much more with little or no code behind. And better still, the code it creates is clean.

Expression Blend in Action is a unique tutorial written for developers. The book starts by demystifying Blend's features and teaching you how to configure, navigate, and use it. You'll learn a fast and simple method for application layout, how to style and theme applications and controls, and how to create compelling user experiences with animations and visual states. You'll also learn how Blend can enhance your business application development through the power of data binding, templates, and behaviors.

Because Blend produces XAML, the techniques in this book are equally effective for developing desktop, web, or Windows Phone 7 applications. For developers, Blend is all about being more productive, so the book is loaded with tips and techniques designed to save you time and help you create stunning, high-quality UI. As an added bonus, in the appendices you'll get a look at the new version of Blend for Windows Phone 7, a primer on Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) application architecture, a quick guide to Expression Design, and more.