MS Expression Blend 4 according to the authors of the book "Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Step by Step"

Chris Leeds and Elena Kosinska are authors of notable book published by Microsoft Press.  For the short intruduction to MS Expression Blend 4, I would like to take advantage of the characteristcis given in their book.

Contents of thebook
1 Welcome to the Silverlight and WPF World
2 Exploring the Expression Blend 4 IDE
3 Designing an Interface
4 XAML and C#
5 Animations and Transformations .
6 Adding Interactivity .
7 Creating Design Assets
8 Resources
9 Skinning Controls .
10 Working with Data
11 Using SketchFlow .
12 Designer/Developer Collaboration

Organization of the book: http://www.akamonitor.cz/chris.htm

I am sure that reader will welcome in particular the content of chapters 6, 10, 11 and especially 12.  This is fully in accordance with the following words of authors:
„It’s no secret that creating a great user experience takes two types of people, each of whom thinks diferently: designers and developers.  Until recently, designers and  developers didn’t usually work closely together, and they used tools from totally different families. But that’s rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The WPF and Silverlight platforms unify and simplify the designer/developer workflow. Designers work on the front end—creating beautiful user interfaces  adding interactivity, and creating all sorts of cutting-edge elements. Developers work on the back end—writing code that enables application functionality. Both designers and developers can use the same type of project, have a common point of tangency—XAML— and work within one platform.“

Here is the characteristic of MS Expression Blend 4, by the author of the book „Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Step by Step“,  Ch. Leeds and Elena Kosinska.

„Microsoft Expression Blend 4 is Microsoft’s newest interactive design tool. It’s intended for designers and developers who need to create user interfaces for rich Internet, desktop, and mobile applications—and it offers tools that support the design of such applications, from conception to completion. Expression Blend 4 is part of Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Ultimate, a suite of design tools that includes the impressive SketchFlow feature, which helps designers rapidly experiment with dynamic user experiences and create compelling functional prototypes. Expression Blend provides powerful tools for integrating sample data into your application. If you’re just beginning an application design and have no existing sample data to fill it with, Expression Blend provides sample data sources that you can use to populate the application with temporary (but realistic) data. If you do have sample data, Expression Blend lets you use that. In both cases, you’ll be able to view the sample data while you design the user interface even before the application gets connected to the final “live” data source. With Expression Blend, you can even integrate graphics created in other design tools, such as Microsoft Expression Design, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop. The easiest source for integrating external graphic assets is Expression Design. The Expression Design + Expression Blend combination provides simple integration paths, because both applications are in the Expression Studio family. But you aren’t limited to that combination. There are powerful importing tools that integrate assets from Adobe products as well. With Expression Blend, the choice of graphic design tools is up to you. Expression Blend also makes it easy to enable interactivity without writing code. Behaviors, which are powerful interactivity building blocks, were developed expressly so that designers could add interactivity to applications without writing code. The most common task for user interface designers—skinning controls—involves understanding the structure of common controls and creating reusable styles for applications. Powerful Expression Blend style/template editing capabilities help designers to carefully modify the look and feel of default Microsoft Silverlight or Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) controls while retaining their functionality. Expression Blend 4 also makes design workflow easier than ever before. Designers and developers can work seamlessly, sharing projects, code, and designs for better productivity and higher quality results.“

The  book, writen by CH. Leeds and E. Kosinska, is intended for existing or new User Interface/User Experience designers, developers, and design integrators, as well as those who needsome basic knowledge of the tools and capabilities used by designers. Although the book is expressly intended to provide information and step by step examples for new designers, experienced practitioners can use this book as well, to quickly gain familiarity with the Expression Blend 4 user interface and features.
More about the book:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735639010/
More about the MS Expression Blend: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Blend_Overview.aspx
More about the SketchFlow:
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/SketchFlow_Overview.aspx
You can find lot of information in my weblog: 
http://exression-studio-aka.akamonitor.cz .
 4.6.2011. doc.aka@akamonitor.cz