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Available Now: Blend for Visual Studio 2012

Today, I have the great pleasure to announce the latest release of Blend. In this release cycle, our big focus has been Windows 8: Blend now supports UX authoring not just for store apps written in XAML, but also for those written in HTML.

We want to make it really easy for you to create great apps for Windows 8. Therefore, we are now including Blend with Visual Studio 2012, including the free Express for Windows 8 version for authoring Win 8 store apps. With one fast download and install you get VS for your coding-centric tasks and Blend for visual authoring.

Visual Studio 2012 and Blend can be downloaded from MSDN today if you’re an MSDN Subscriber.  You can also download the free Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8, which includes Blend, or free trial versions of Visual Studio 2012 with Blend today.

Visual Studio 2012 and Blend

Blend for Visual Studio 2012 supports XAML store apps with great support for Win 8 features such as app bars, Grid view, and view states. Blend also adds native C++ app development to its repertoire. Also, with the release of VS 2012, the XAML design surface in VS is now built on the same code base as Blend, improving workflow and interoperability.

Completely new in Blend is visual authoring for HTML and CSS, especially for Windows 8 store apps.

Blend is a unique, innovative and exciting authoring tool with rich visual tools. It gives you great tools to create, edit and diagnose CSS, supporting some of the latest CSS standards, including CSS Grid, Gradients, Transitions, and media queries. Blend creates clean and standard-conformant markup.

It also is designed to handle app UX that makes heavy use of JavaScript to dynamically create and manipulate DOM elements. Blend constantly runs your code on the design surface, so that content generated by JavaScript can be displayed and edited accurately. Using Interactive Mode you can even interact with the app on the design surface and bring it into states that are not reachable via markup at all.

In summary, Blend for HTML makes visual authoring of HTML, CSS and WinJS productive, fast, and fun again.

Blend for VS 2012, design surface

Additional Releases

As said above, this release is focused on store apps for Windows 8. We are also working on support for WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow compatible with VS 2012. A preview is available for download. Please keep in mind that it is intended for evaluation and feedback only.

For production work, please use the following releases:

Target Platform

Blend for Production
Windows 8 Store (XAML and HTML) Blend for Visual Studio 2012
(included in VS Express for Windows 8 and in VS 2012 Pro/Premium/Ultimate)
WPF Blend 4
SketchFlow Project Blend 4
Silverlight 4 and earlier Blend 4
Silverlight 5 Blend Preview for Silverlight 5
Windows Phone 7.5 and 7.0 Windows Phone SDK 7.1 (includes Blend for Windows Phone)

 

Summary

Blend for Visual Studio is a great visual authoring tool for Windows store apps in XAML and HTML. It is the most accessible version of Blend ever, available with the free Windows 8 development tools, as well as all other packages of Visual Studio 2012.

There is a lot to explore. Please download it and give it a try. We are eagerly looking forward to your feedback.

  • Anonymous

    So to be clear, there will be a later release that adds WPF support to Blend for Visual Studio? That’s pretty great news, much nicer to have things better integrated into VS. :)

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  • nm

    Still no solution folder support! Is that so hard to implement?

    • Michelle Rosenthal

      Hi nm – My name is Michelle and I’m a Program Manager on Blend for Visual Studio. Can you provide some more details about what you mean by “solution folder support”? Thanks!

      • nm

        Hi Michelle!
        Thank you for your response first! In Visual Studio you can right click on a
        solution and add a (virtual) folder to organize your projects (right click
        -> add -> new solution folder). But if you open such a solution in ‘Blend
        + SketchFlow Preview for Visual Studio 2012’ you will get the following error
        message ‘Solution Folders are not supported. Nested projects will be loaded
        normally’. In our company, we have solutions with 200 and more projects. You
        can’t just manage such a solution without folders and working with blend is
        just an imposition! Please fix that!

        • Nick

          nm: You can create multiple solution files that reference the same project files. If your projects dependencies are managed well perhaps the UX folks can have a solution file with only the handful of projects they work with, and their dependencies.

  • http://twitter.com/MossyBlog Scott Barnes c[x┬○]כ

    Less talk more Silverlight 5 RTM….

  • http://www.facebook.com/kokchiann Kok Chiann

    Ouuuu, guess I still can’t work on Silverlight 5 with this release :(

    • Chad Bentz

      this really blindsided me. Upgrade a project to SL5 and had a UX team mad at me that they cant use Blend anymore!

  • Rodrigo Díaz Concha

    How are you going to fix this current fragmentation in Blend products?

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  • debergerac

    The lack of first class support for Silveright 5 is a shame. Microsoft declared the support for this platform for 10 years and now is takes a year to get the Blend support :(

  • Manoel dos Santos

    So it seems we won’t be able to import files from Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to Blend… Is it right?

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  • http://www.facebook.com/benjamin.s.hall.1 Benjamin S. Hall

    Oh it gets even better! Microsoft is not supporting the RadialGradientBrush – can you believe that? That has got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!
    Hey Microsoft – We’re the CUSTOMERS! Put the RadialGradientBrush back in!

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  • http://www.facebook.com/JNaMolefe Jaryd Nathan Drake

    Is Blend included in Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop? :(

    • Lori Dirks

      Hi Jaryd,

      Sorry, Blend is ot included in Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop. If you want to develop for the desktop (SL/WPF) you’ll need to use the Blend version that is appropriate for the platform you’re targeting—see the table above–like Blend 4. For non-production work, you can try out our Blend +SketchFlow Preview for VS 2012.

      Thanks,
      Lori

  • harlequin

    Blend for VS2012 does need intellisense. Blend 3 and Blend 4 had it…not sure why it was removed. Sometimes you want to do some quick Xaml in Blend, and it doesn’t even end tags for you…the most basic stuff.

  • Afnan Makhdoom

    How do I make a store app??? I cant see the design view of my app and when I open my app in blend I can’t type in visual basic codes in there!!! I m going nuts, I didn’t paid $1200 for this and $60 for Windows 8 Pro!

  • Charles Carroll

    Blend 4 is required for WPF development and will only launch VS 2010 for code editing with no option to point to VS 2012. If VS 2012 is not compatible with the only production WPF version of Blend, why isn’t this stated flatly in the Target Platform table above? For WPF, Blend 4 AND VS 2010, NOT VS 2012. VS 2012 is an utter waste of money if you use Blend 4.

  • Jeff Braun

    Can’t view my XAML in Design mode for a Win7 .NET 4.5 WPF app? Replace the P in WPF with T and you’ll understand my feelings.

  • Bulli

    So what about WPF support for Blend 2012???

  • Patpar

    Created a new VS2012 Silverlight project, stock standard, opened the solution in Blend 2012 and no design view is available for the (unmodified) UserControl….. . Why doesn’t it just work!!!!???

  • josederio

    I can move an image in time of execution with blend?

  • http://twitter.com/Semasiographic Art Scott

    “Design view is unavailable for x64 and ARM target platforms”. … is this still true?

  • Ben

    Wow, guys! What an improvement! I can’t tell you how much better this looks for web development than what I was seeing earlier. Wonderful job.

  • 3R1KU54J

    Is Microsoft able to produce a *SINGLE* website with relevant information? Like DOWNLOAD links?

    To achieve a simple task a developer is routed via multiple Websites not linked together in any sensible manner. support is dropped to some wierd communities and blogs, or better to say Microsoft is not providing support at all!? MSDN has partial and/wrong information. Ah and there is Windows Store site Windows phone Site… Cross-M$-platform does not exist at Microsoft.

    Anyway a simple task like adding a custom font to your app is a pain in the *censored*. Sure you can add the font to /assets/fonts/ but then it’s another waste of precious time to make it work, not to say a developer/desinger has a simple way to figure if font gets actually built as a resource (*LEGAL ISSUE*) and cannot be simply disassembled with a regular Zip-file utility.

    Thank you so much for Making our lives more complicated!