Chart FX for WPF Compatibility with Expression Blend 3

[JuanC]

With the release of Expression Blend 3 RC the supported design time API is almost the same as in Visual Studio so we are happy to report that starting with Chart FX for WPF build 3482 our wizard will be available in Blend 3. Although you can open a project in Blend 2 and interact with a Chart FX chart in the property grid, most of the design time API exposed by Visual Studio is not supported in Blend 2 so it was impossible for us to expose this UI.

Note that integration with the Blend Toolbox requires a couple of registry keys pointing to the folder where the Chart FX for WPF binaries are located, our installers will create this key from now on but you can also create them manually following the instructions here.

There is one feature used in our wizard where Blend 3 still does not support the same functionality as Visual studio 2008 or 2010 and that is adding references to the project from the design time assembly, because of this there are some pages where we cannot expose certain options until you manually add the references. In Visual Studio we do expose them and automatically add the references as needed. The most important scenarios where this is notable are:

• In the Gallery Page, if you select Other in VS we will show additional galleries exposed in extension assemblies such as Rose and HighLow. In Blend you have to manually add references to ChartFX.WPF.Rose and ChartFX.WPF.HighLow before these options are available

• In the Motifs pages we expose Chart Styles, Borders and Palettes from additional assemblies, in the image below you will notice that Blend only exposes Styles from our core assembly. If you manually add references to ChartFX.WPF.Motifs and ChartFX.WPF.Motifs.HandDrawn you will have access to additional styles including Edge, Spotlight, Floating, Blinds and HandDrawn

 

Please note that if you installed our product on the beta period and have not reinstalled the release bits, you might have the Design assemblies in the same folder as the core dlls, we have now moved to a scheme where Design dlls are placed in a Design subdirectory, if you plan to use our hotfix/servicepack installers from the browser we recommend you manually move all the design files to make sure they are properly updated. If you