FacingBlend’s Silverlight page is LIVE!
Since yesterday, I’ve had several emails asking questions regarding this release, so I thought I’d share a bit.
Most websites that I’ve seen around which had displays of Silverlight use weren’t as artistic as I thought a site could be. Expression Blend is a very powerful tool, and like most tools, if you really play with it, you can find that you can do almost anything if you just play with it long enough and tailor things to fit what you want, but… I’m not seeing that being done!
So I wanted to create a silverlight website that really pushed hard and heavy on the “pretty” side. I wanted it to use my favorite color, green ( no relation to the current popularity with “going green” ), but still have a little “windows vista /7” glassy watery look/ feel for the background. The centerfocus on the site isn’t really the content, its on the background which is done entirely in XAML.
That’s right – the pretty thing that appears to be raster based, is 100% xaml.
Now, I wasn’t really going for a “portfolio” either – this is my personal website. My play-thing over the web, so I stayed away from the typical “portfolio” feel. I’m having fun here. I feel like I’m playing when I’m working in Expression Blend, and I really wanted that to show in the design. I think my absolute favorite part is a little geeky. Even the icons are done in Xaml and I think there’s just something awesome about that.
The Toybox itself was what pulled back my timeline a bit. What to put in there? What to NOT put in there and how the heck do I want to organize it?
Well, I kept not having time to work on this and it sat on a back burner not being worked on for months. I seriously had this nearly done back in December of 08, but I got stuck working on a few other things and having a blast with my family and helping out with a logo for the company, Seovian (which you can find in my galleries here on my blog).
I then was pushed by 2 different projects that I’m working with to upgrade to Silverlight 3 and with that, I forced everything aside, brought Facing Blend in Silverlight back into the forefront and finished the entire Toybox in 3 days(in my spare time).
I still look at this stuff and have to remind myself that I actually did this, all on my own, that I’m not looking at someone else’s work. I still can’t believe how much I’ve learned in such a short amount of time. Maybe it’ll sink in a few years from now, but until then, I keep getting deeply involved in design work and when I come “out of it” and look at the whole picture, I am impressing even myself. 2 years ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed that I could do what I just released. It just blows my mind.