This document discusses design time concepts in Microsoft Expression Blend including sample data, item templates, and visual states. It provides an overview of using sample data to facilitate design and development. Item templates define the appearance of individual items in a list control bound to a data collection. Visual states allow defining animations and transitions between states to provide visual feedback to users. The document concludes with information on creating visual states and applying them using behaviors.

1. Designing Applications using Expression Blend Jason Lee Ethos Technologies

3. ItemTemplate

4. Visual State

5. Play Time

7. Enables fast and efficient design work

8. Enables parallel work of designing and coding

9. If set properly, the DataBinding expressions can be reused in production version, reducing duplication of work

10. Sample Data Types

11. Simple Property

12. Complex Property

13. Collection Property

14. How to do it?

16. Two common list controls : ItemsPanel, ListBox

17. When DataBound to collection data, it generates Child Items according to the collection

18. The appearance of each Child Item is defined by the list control’s ItemTemplate property

19. ItemTemplate

20. Is a DataTemplate

21. Defines how each item of ItemsControl/ListBox looks like

23. Storyboard

24. Visual State

25. Visual State

26. Is an easy way to define storyboard

27. Has many pre-defined transitions to apply

28. VisualStateGroup

29. VisualStates are grouped and managed by VisualStateGroup

30. However, VisualStates are NOT allowed to have duplicate name within the same page

31. Principles

32. Visual States looks good, but also resource consuming, use it carefully

34. More than one Visual States make sense

35. Set some visible transitions, so that user may feel something is happening

36. You can preview the effect in Blend by switching between them

37. Apply a GoToStateAction Behavior

38. Attach the behavior to the invoking control (i.e. Button)

39. The EventName of the Behavior’s Trigger is automatically set by Blend, and can be changed

40. Set Target State

42. Understand how to define and apply different types of Design Time Sample Data

43. Get familiar with list control’s ItemTemplate