The most Comprehensive Blend for Visual Studio training you will ever receive – for Free; you’re welcome!

November 2013, immediately after the release of Visual Studio 2013, I sat down for an all-day session with Unni Ravindranathan, the Senior Program Manager for Blend. Who better to walk through, not the new features of Blend, but all the core features of Blend – and the new features, too. In some cases, Blend for Visual Studio 2013 returned some of the features removed in Blend for Visual Studio 2012. But in many cases, it’s just candy tooling for the XAML developer.

Is this for you?

Do you want to see Blend in action and learn how to incorporate its bountiful power easily into your current projects? Windows 8 projects, you bet! Silverlight projects, you bet! Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) projects, too? You bet! Blend is a tool for XAML developers, not just Windows 8 developers. In fact, in some cases, Blend does more for the Silverlight and WPF developer. So, enjoy.

NOTE: The sample code for this course is located here.

1) Designing Your XAML UI with Blend: (01) XAML Development in Visual Studio 2013, Part 1

[05:08] - XAML Intro
[07:50] - XAML Editing Experience
[31:46] - Coding Experience
[33:51] - New XAML Controls

This video is about the tooling for XAML developers in Visual Studio.

2) Designing Your XAML UI with Blend: (02) XAML Development in Visual Studio 2013, Part 2

[01:58] - Built-in Templates
[22:36] - XAML Editing Experience
[38:31] - Coding Experience

This video is about the tooling for XAML developers in Visual Studio.

3) Designing Your XAML UI with Blend: (03) XAML Design and Styling in Blend, Part 1

[03:26] - Intro to Blend
[16:55] - Pixel Perfect Design
[28:55] - Behaviors and Actions

This video is about the tooling for XAML developers in Blend.

4) Designing Your XAML UI with Blend: (04) XAML Design and Styling in Blend, Part 2

[01:39] - Animations
[17:57] - Resource Management
[38:31] - Data
[56:47] – Features

This video is about the tooling for XAML developers in Blend.

5) Designing Your XAML UI with Blend: (05) Building Windows Store Apps with Blend

[01:50] - Demo P1
[44:52] - Demo P2

This video walks through building an entire Store App from scratch.

6) Designing Your XAML UI with Blend: (06) Developer Candy

[00:46] - XAML Candy
[07:49] - Q&A

This video answers frequently asked questions, and shows off some candy.

And that’s a whole day of learning.
I hope you enjoy it!

Best of luck!