blendables.com

August CTPs - We're so close

kurt.brockett — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:16:00 GMT

July CTPs run out of gas tonight so we dropped a couple new builds.

Layout Mix August CTP: http://blendables.com/files/folders/layout_ctp/entry455.aspx

3D Mix August CTP: http://blendables.com/files/folders/3d_ctp/entry456.aspx

These should be identical to the July CTP builds with just an updated expireation date of September 30, 2008.

We're extremely close to finishing up the next two products and will also be announcing some updates to the product line as a whole. I can't share the exact details just yet but it should make a lot of current and new customers happy.

Thanks for being blendables customers, fans, skeptics, etc and for coming along with us as we build out these exciting new products.

Kurt

New July CTPs posted for Layout and 3D Mix

kurt.brockett — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:12:00 GMT

The expiration for the existing CTPs is set to expire Friday, June 13, 2008.

We decided to take a snapshot in our current developement and release two new July CTPs.

Layout Mix July CTP: http://blendables.com/files/folders/layout_ctp/entry455.aspx

3D Mix July CTP: http://blendables.com/files/folders/3d_ctp/entry456.aspx

There were some property changes and thus we also reposted all the samples to ensure they work properly with the July CTPs. We are working on a list of changes as well as some new samples to demonstrate new features. You can expect to see some of those soon.

Enjoy and as always please post to the forurms if you have ANY questions. You can also email us at support@blendables.com if there are any questions that can't be posted.

Kurt

Podder Skinning Competition

kurt.brockett — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:05:00 GMT

Josh Smith, creator of Podder, the WPF podcast player app, has announced a Podder Skinning Competition. To help draw attention to the contest and to support the WPF community we have up'd the ante a bit by providing a free copy of blendables essentials mix to the winner.

Contest Page: http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/podder-skinning-competition/

Blog Post from Josh on Blendables: http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/identitymine-sweetens-the-pot/

Good luck to all that enter!

The blendables team

New Features in the May CTP Release of the Layout Mix

JonathanRuss — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:05:00 GMT

Here's a little deeper rundown on the new features in the Layout Mix (May CTP Release).

The Layout mix now includes full support for enter and exit animations when children are added to or removed from an animation panel. The March CTP had a number of hooks for the enter and exit animations, but they were not yet implemented. These new animations are in addition to the existing support for layout animations and switch animations (which come into play when the panel is used within the Layouts collection of a SwitchPanel).

The May CTP also introduces a couple of new animation panels: Carousel and Grid. Like all animation panels, these new panels can be used as layouts within a SwitchPanel or they can serve as standalone panels.

The new Grid panel behaves just like the native WPF Grid but it adds all of the goodness that is provided by the AnimationPanel base class. This includes animated repositioning of the grid's children and support for enter and exit animations when children are added or removed from the panel.

The new Carousel panel is a 2D panel that arranges its children in an elliptical layout. By default, the panel will scale its children and set their z-index values to create a 2D layout that has the appearance of a 3D carousel. For greater control, you may opt out of this automatic scaling and ordering behavior and control the scale and z-indices via bindings to attached properties on the children. Here is a sample demonstrating how the Carousel panel can be used as an items host for a ListBox.

Finally, the May CTP introduces a new "SwitchTemplate" concept to augment the SwitchPanel class. Just to recap the purpose of SwitchPanel a bit... SwitchPanel is all about layout-to-layout animations in WPF. The active layout of a SwitchPanel can be set to any AnimationPanel. Transitions between layouts are animated using an iterative animator that can be specified on the SwitchPresenter or on individual animation panels within the Layouts collection.

The animator that is used to perform switch animations (or for enter, exit, or layout animations in an animation panel) can be a custom class that provides frame-based or time-based updates. It can also be any one of the included animators that ship as part of the Blendables library. These existing animators are built upon the Penner animation equations.

Using the new SwitchTemplate concept that is introduced in the May CTP, you can now place SwitchPresenter elements anywhere within the element subtree of a SwitchPanel. When the active layout of the owning SwitchPanel changes, the template of the SwitchPresenter elements will automatically be updated to the SwitchTemplate associated with the new layout. Not only will this result in a template change, but any items within the new template that can be mapped to items within the old template (because they share the same SwitchTemplate.ID attached property value) will automatically animate to their new positions. This subelement animation will occur using the same animator that is used for switch animations in the SwitchPanel.

Stay tuned for samples demonstrating all of these cool new features. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

Cheers!
-Jonathan

New CTPs - Get em while they're hot

kurt.brockett — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:56:00 GMT

Tonight sometime your March CTPs for the Layout and 3D mix are set to expire. Good news though. We have new CTPs for your CTPing pleasure.

Report for the Layout Mix:

New May CTP Uploaded (expiration June 13) - http://blendables.com/files/folders/layout_ctp/entry455.aspx
Enter and Exit Animations for both AnimationPanel and SwitchPanel
SwitchTemplate Support for SwitchPanel
New Carousel panel as AnimationPanel
New Grid as AnimationPanel
We'll have samples posted shortly.

Report for the 3D Mix:

New May CTP Uploaded (expiration June 13, 2008) - http://blendables.com/files/folders/3d_ctp/entry456.aspx
No breaking changes to report.

As always please let us know if you have any questions in the support forums.

Thanks all!

Kurt

All Aboard for The Code Trip

kurt.brockett — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 04:56:00 GMT

Earlier this week IdentityMine and the blendables team jumped at the opportunity to help support 'The Code Trip', Microsoft's ongoing bus tour of the Western US. At each stop starting in Irvine, CA the blendables crew has added blendables essentials mix as prize giveaways.

I'll be driving down to San Luis Obispo, CA this upcoming Monday, March 31 to join up with the tour. I'll be riding with the crew up to Santa Cruz and will be at the Mountain View and San Franciso events as well. If you can make it out be sure to track me down.

You can find more info about the trip here:

Events: http://thecodetrip.com/1/events

Travel Log: http://thecodetrip.com/1/blog

Hope to see you on the road!

- Kurt

New Samples and great feedback!

kurt.brockett — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:15:00 GMT

Really want to thank the community for downloading and checking out our latest offerings. Since we returned from MIX we've been working like mad to get samples up which demonstrate how to use the new mixes.

You can find 5 new 3d samples here: http://blendables.com/files/folders/3d_samples/default.aspx

We have 1 large sample for the layout mix which shows the SwitchPanel infrastructure and a bunch of the individual Panels. You can find that sample and future layout mix samples here: http://blendables.com/files/folders/layout_samples/default.aspx

If you have ANY questions, comments, feedback please visit us in the forums and leave us a message:

Essentials Mix Forum: http://blendables.com/forums/8.aspx

3D Mix Forum: http://blendables.com/forums/36.aspx

Layout Mix Forum: http://blendables.com/forums/35.aspx

Thanks all!

Kurt

2 New Products - Blendables 3D Mix and Blendables Layout Mix

kurt.brockett — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:38:00 GMT

One of the main reasons for relaunching the new blendables.com was to provide a new, updated home for multiple products. I'm happy to announce that we have 2 new products in the blendables family.

Right now we just have the CTP installers out but you should start seeing samples make their way onto the site over the next few weeks.

Read more about each of the products here:

Blendables 3D Mix

Blendables Layout Mix

Thanks all and we look forward to your feedback. Please be sure to jump in and add to the forums if you have any questions/requests.

-Kurt

Be right back....

kurt.brockett — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:12:00 GMT

Don't fret. We know the site is down and no it has not been compromised by rogue h4x0rz. Check back later today for the new hotness.

who needs stickers when you have spray paint?

kurt.brockett — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:35:00 GMT

Over the next few months I'll be participating in a few events including MIX08, SXSWi and Microsoft's The Code Trip bus tour. I looked into getting my laptop laser etched but from what I've seen on the web, etching the Thinkpads don't look as good as the MacBooks. I decided on paint and had a local sign shop cut out a stencil for me from an .ai file I provided to them. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and adds a little more fun to my rig than a plain black top.

blendables laptop on flickr

MIX08 is near. See the IdentityMine Sessions.

kurt.brockett — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:05:00 GMT

As part of our yearly pilgramage to MIX08 we usually have a few opportunities to talk about the exciting things going on at IdentityMine. 2008 is no exception. This year we have 3 sessions we're participating in. One is our own session and we are participating on two panels. Information on on the sessions can be found below.

Nerd + Art: Ten Code Snippets to Empower Your Inner Artist

Friday, March 7 10:00 AM - 11:15 AM, Lando 4201

Speaker(s): Nathan Dunlap (Identity Mine), Robby Ingebretsen (Identity Mine)

Session Type: Breakout

Learn how to increase what a designer can do with Windows Presentation Foundation and Microsoft Silverlight 2 using our designer's code "toolbox"-10 simple concepts that will give you an edge when making your best ideas a reality. We share the code, teach you how to use it and introduce the concepts behind it.

Making it Simple: Designer/Developer Workflow

Wednesday, March 5 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM, Delfino 4001

Speaker(s): Marcelo Marer (Avenue A Razorfish), Ken Azuma (Second Factory), Robby Ingebretsen (Identity Mine), Ryan Lane (Wunderman), Mark Ligameri (frog design), Christian Schormann (MODERATOR), Robert Tuttle (frog design)

Session Type: Panel

How do you combine a designer's vision with the requirements of productive software? Left brain/Right brain workflow is a sophisticated problem that impacts us all but has no easy answers. Industry experts will share their learnings and invite you to join in on a lively discussion about the merits and costs of different approaches.

Real World Design: Working with Silverlight and WPF in the Design Studio

Thursday, March 6 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM, Delfino 4001

Speaker(s): Beau Ambur (Metalliq), Chip Aubry (Tribal), Chris Bernard (MODERATOR), Nathan Dunlap (Identity Mine), Rich Weston (Neudesic)

Audience(s): Creative, Technical

Session Type: Panel

Silverlight and WPF represent a new way for designers and developers work together. But what happens in a professional practice that's focused more on employing designers than developers and using Macs versus PCs for much of their daily design work? Join us as we find out how practitioners from companies like Tribal, Projekt202, Metaliq and Identity Mine discuss the learning curves and the workflow that they adapted with their visual designers and rich interactive developers to get up to speed with Expression Studio, XAML and Silverlight. You'll hear the unvarnished truth about the challenges and rewards of how Silverlight is enabling the digital design practice.

2008 is Great!

kurt.brockett — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:45:00 GMT

Well before heading out from our first week of 2008 here at Blendables HQ I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year. In 2007 we went from 0 -> Product for Sale in a mere 10 months. It was a big effort from the entire IdentityMine team and I want to thank all the users who helped us during the CTP period in testing the final set of controls. I can guarantee you we're not done with the Essentials Mix and you can plan on a bunch of new products shipping in 2008, making it a great year for blendables and the WPF/Silverlight platform.

- Kurt

Win blendables with Lab49 - WPF in Finance Innovation Contest

kurt.brockett — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:52:00 GMT

A few weeks ago Lab49 announced their Finance Innovation Contest. It's great to see a community being built around WPF and as new members to the component market we're always looking for ways to contribute and support the space.

I immediately reached out to the Lab49 folks and a few days later blendables was setup as a sponsor of the contest. We're giving away 25% coupons to entrants as well as complimentary licenses to blendables essentials mix to the finalists.

The basics of the contest is that the Lab49 group has put together a financial data set and they want users to come up with new and exciting ways to visualize and interact with the set. They are sold on the power of WPF in the financial enterprise and want to help show the potential of Microsoft's most powerful programming platform. Lab49 brought in some heavy hitters as judges and have a treasure chest full of awesome prizes to entice WPFers out there.

I look forward to seeing all the great entries and I thank Lab49 for having blendables as a sponsor.

Welcome to the Social

kurt.brockett — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:42:00 GMT

Well since Microsoft doesn't use the tagline anymore I figured it was ok to use as a blog post title :).

In addition to the membership and information shared on blendables.com we wanted to extend our community offerings to also include some social networks. How could we be next gen without facebook?!

What can I say? Facebook offers some great social networking features and we needed a place to aggregate things such as our photos from flickr, links from news sources, videos, etc. Most importantly facebook offers a chance for our customers to utilize some of the social aspects of the site to interact with us and each other. Blendables on Facebook

Want to know the answer to the question "What is Blendables Doing?". Then be sure to follow blendables over on Twitter. You'll find links, random thoughts and who knows maybe even a discount will sneak in there every so often. Blendables on Twitter

When we were setting up groups on facebook and twitter one of our team members overseas jumped in and created a community on Orkut. While Orkut doesn't have a huge following in the US it definately has a large and active community in the rest of the world. Because we cater to designers and developers all over the world we wanted to ensure we took blendables to where everyone hangs out and has a chance to participate. Blendables on Orkut

We want to ensure you know blendables is YOUR product and we're listening on how to make things an even better experience. So let us know and participate as much as possible.

- Kurt

How to embed the blendables essentials mix license....

kurt.brockett — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:17:00 GMT

Just a quick screencasts on license embedding.

Check out the full writeup over in the forums:

http://blendables.com/forums/t/157.aspx

moar funny pictures

Hola from Barcelona - TechEd Developers 2007

kurt.brockett — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:48:00 GMT

It's been a great few days for blendables and IdentityMine. Below is a quick snapshot of the booth and some of the sessions that have already completed.

(click photo for slideshow)

Fire up the grill - blendables essentials mix v1.0 now available

kurt.brockett — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:35:00 GMT

I'm happy to announce the release of blendables essentials mix v1.0.

With the help of the entire blendables community we have made some great enhancements to the mix. Some things you will notice that were not available in the CTP are:

Full SDK Style Documentation - Available after install at Start -> All Programs -> IdentityMine Blendables -> Essentials Mix -> Documentation

Blendables Mixer - Sample Viewer - Available after install at Start -> All Programs -> IdentityMine Blendables -> Blendables Mixer

Integrated with Microsoft Expression Blend and Visual Studio.

So give it a spin with a 60 day trial or better yet jump in and pick up a few licenses. Visit our home page at www.blendables.com for all the information.

Thank you all!

The Blendables Team

"Show Us Your Blendables" contest extended and NEW July CTP

kurt.brockett — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:32:00 GMT

We wanted to give everyone in the community a little more time in the kitchen to cook up some new samples. We have extended the deadline for the "Show Us Your Blendables" contest to October 1, 2007.

We are burning the midnight oil to bring our first mix into the market and you can be confident that it is coming soon. The existing JulyCTP was set to expire on 10/1/07. While we fully expect to have a shipping product by that date we did not want our customers to worry about a potential timebomb on 10/1/07. The July CTP that is now posted (even though it says posted on 4/24/07) has an updated expiration date of 11/1/07.

You can find the updated JulyCTP here: http://www.blendables.com/files/folders/ctp_download/entry20.aspx

Thank you for all the great feedback in the forums and for your patience as we work at adding just the right spices before serving up our first mix.

- Kurt

ZoomDocs

JonathanRuss — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:34:00 GMT

Documentation for the Zoombox control is now available for download, including the full default Zoombox style and template. Check it out!

Calling all Chefs - Show us your blendables and win.

kurt.brockett — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:35:00 GMT

As we head into the final stretch before shipping, the blendables team would love to see what the community has been cooking up with the Essentials mix. So what's the best way to get the community involved? Simple, give away free stuff. This isn't just any free stuff but the prizes include a Xbox360 Elite, $100 Gift Card to Best Buy and plenty of free licences for our top chefs.

The samples will be judged on 4 very scientific criteria

Creativity
Real World Application
Design Asthetic
Awesomeness (<- my favorite).

So you've got about a month to whip us up something tasty. The deadline for submission is September 3, 2007 at 12AM.

For complete details checkout our contest page available at: http://blendables.com/contest/Contest.aspx

There's Always Time for Pie!

JonathanRuss — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 04:02:00 GMT

If you like geeky simplicity, check out this XAML clock. It was built by one of our designers, Nathan Dunlap, using only the Pie shape and the EvalBinding markup extension. It was built using the just-released July CTP version of the Blendables™ Essentials Mix. If you’ve already installed the July CTP bits, try the lightweight version of the Pie clock.

EvalBinding Enhancements in July CTP

JonathanRuss — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:58:00 GMT

The July CTP release of the Essentials Mix contains a lot of improvements for the EvalBinding markup extension. Check out the latest version of the EvalBinding and SimpleBinding Whitepaper for information related to new debugging features, partial trust support, ClickOnce deployment, and more.

July Customer Technology Preview (CTP) available

kurt.brockett — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 04:41:00 GMT

A couple of new things you'll find in the July CTP:

We were able to fix the issue referenced in this forum post: http://blendables.com/forums/t/89.aspx
We added some new functionality to ChromelessWindow. See the updated scenario #4 in the ChromelessWindow documentation to read up on the 3 new attached properties that were added: http://blendables.com/files/folders/essentials_documentation/entry109.aspx.

The timeout on this package is still set to run until October 1, 2007 uninterrupted.

I can't thank the community enough for your feedback. Keep posting to the forums and keep letting us know what you'd like to see.

You can find the updated JulyCTP by clicking on the "download now" button on the blendables.com homepage.

Take Your Bindings to the Next Level

JonathanRuss — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:42:00 GMT

With EvalBinding and SimpleBinding, you may never need to write another custom value converter!

Check out this whitepaper for some long-overdue documentation, samples, and technical information regarding the EvalBinding and SimpleBinding markup extensions. We really think these new XAML extensions will unleash some power for WPF designers and developers. Please let us know what you manage to pull off using these bindings.

We've seen the light! - Blendables Silverlight

kurt.brockett — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:35:00 GMT

Here at IdentityMine we are all about WPF, XAML and everything that goes with it. When we were at MIX07 we were just as excited as everyone else about Silverlight and everything it had to offer. The team immediately started digging in and pushing the Silverlight platform. Over the last couple of months one of our senior software architects, David Kelley, has spent considerable time with Silverlight and Microsoft's Popfly Silverlight sharing service.

Today we're pleased to point you to David's work in the Silverlight space and introduce you to some of the Blendables Silverlight controls he has put together. Follow the badge on www.blendables.com to read up on these new Silverlight controls. You can access Blendables Silverlight controls here: (link). At this time you need a Popfly account to utilize the controls, but we'll be sure to package them up ASAP so others can have some fun with them.

Be sure to check in with us and let us know what you think at the new Blendables : Silverlight forum (link)