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Microsoft Expression Blend 3 has brought us two built-in Effect components, BlurEffect and DropdownEffect. Since descriptions of these two effects can be easily found in the Internet, we will not go into them. However, to achieve other more magic effects in your Silverlight game app, you will often fall back upon a third party to provide custom effects into the project, and then apply, in the same way as the method provided by Expression Blend 3, these effects to the objects in the artboard.

In fact, as developers, we can create our own custom effects in tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio. This article will teach you how to, by creating a custom effect and apply it to a static image to show the typical programming process.

In doing a lot of speaking engagements I get asked lots of Silverlight questions.  From these questions I have noticed a pattern emerging whereby many people have a terrible time working with gradients.  Of course the real trick, as is with anything, is practice but before one can start to practice they have to understand the tools of the trade.  So, in this short, 10 minute video I show you how to duplicate a somewhat complex gradient while along the way explaining the tools required to do the job; namely, the Gradient tool, the color palette and the Gradient Eyedropper tools. 

I published a new demo video on how to create a light glossy 3D effect for a Silverlight 3 Textblock control with Expression Blend 3. Watch the step-by-step video at LawBot on Silverlight, my video channel on vimeo.com.

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As part of the CRE8 Conference last week in Miami, August de los Reyes and I presented a collection of the cool videos, websites and customer stories. Here is a great list for you with the best of best in Silverlight and UX.

You never know what hijinks are in store when Adam Kinney and John get together. In this episode, Adam makes his theatrical return to Silverlight TV and claims to have filmed the best Expression Blend 3 video ever!

The Expression Blend and Design team give more information on some of the behaviors they shipped as a part of Expression Blend 3, focusing first on the GoToStateAction.

Over the next couple of weeks, it seems like a good idea to go over some of the behaviors we shipped as a part of Expression Blend 3. Many of you have mentioned that you would like to learn more about the stock behaviors we ship and how they are used, so this blog will be a good interim solution for that until we properly incorporate your feedback into our future product documentation.

First up on our list is one of my favorite behaviors that we shipped, the GoToStateAction!

David Burela has a quick tutorial about creating add-ins in Expression Blend 3.

There isn’t much information available for creating Expression blend 3 addins. There is some information on creating blend 2 plugins, but the addin model has changed between versions.

Here I have given an overview of what is needed to setup your Visual studio environment, as well as sample code and a sample project to get you up and running.

Ribbit Developers typically create Silverlight applications in one of two ways. The first way is to use our Ribbit for Silverlight controls by adding them into Visual Studio. We have a tutorial of that here. Another way is to use our Ribbit for Silverlight controls in Microsoft's Expression Blend 3.

You can download Ribbit for Silverlight in the Silverlight section of the Ribbit's Developer Center. You must register to be a Ribbit Developer, but registration is free and easy.