Yesterday I explained how to get started with Microsoft Silverlight 2 beta 1 if you're a developer. If you're a designer rather than a developer, of if you're a developer who does some UI design and prefers to drag and drop controls rather than writing XAML, you'll need to download and install at least one more tool: the Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview. Why is that? Given how good the WPF Desig Yesterday I explained how to get started with Microsoft Silverlight 2 beta 1 if you’re a developer. If you’re a designer rather than a developer, of if you’re a developer who does some UI design and prefers to drag and drop controls rather than writing XAML, you’ll need to download and install at least one more tool: the Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview.Why is that? Given how good the WPF Designer is in Visual Studio 2008 (VS08), why should you need Expression Blend?The answer is that the Silverlight 2.0 tools for VS08 really are in a Beta 1 state. Yes, the WPF Designer opens for a Silverlight 2 project in VS08; yes, the Silverlight 2 controls appear in the toolbox. But no, you can’t drop them on the design surface, at least not yet: the mouse cursor turns into the universal “not allowed” symbol if you try, as shown in the figure below. On the other hand, you can type in XAML, see error messages when it’s wrong, and see the UI displayed when it’s correct. You can drag and drop controls onto the Silverlight 2.0 design surface with Expression Blend 2.5, although the documentation warns that this part of the preview isn’t up to the standards of the Expression Blend 2.0, of which it is a superset. As long as you’re downloading Expression tools, you may also want the balance of the Expression Studio 2.0 beta: Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Media, and Expression Encoder.I’m happy to report that the Expression 2.0 betas and the 2.5 preview do not overwrite or interfere with production copies of Expression 1.0. So far, what I have seen of the betas and preview is mostly good, but I like the safety of being able to use release-quality tools when necessary. Software Development