If you want to expand the controls available to you inside Microsoft Expression Blend then a good start is downloading the latest Silverlight toolkit from Codeplex. At the moment the toolkit features the following Stable new controls;

• AutoCompleteBox
• DockPanel
• HeaderedContentControl
• HeaderedItemsControl
• Label
• NumericUpDown
• TreeView
• WrapPanel

I will post some examples and tricks using these controls over the next few weeks.

How to install the new controls

Once you have downloaded the toolkit, extract the files to your hard drive and launch Expression Blend.

Select the ‘Project’ tab and right click on the ‘References’ folder, select ‘Add Reference…’.

Use the file browser that appears to find the extracted files from the downloaded toolkit. Open the ‘Binaries’ folder and select the file ‘Microsoft.Windows.Controls.dll’. You can add all 4 files inside the ‘Binaries’ folder, but most of the Stable controls are inside the above file.

To be able to use the full functionality of the controls, we need to reference them in the XAML. Add the line xmlns:Controls=”clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Windows.Controls” in with the rest of the meta data at the top of the XAML.

Remember to add a reference for each of the items you added in the ‘Binaries’ folder. You will need a different identifier for each reference, I have used ‘Controls’ for the above one.

To use the new controls you need to click on the ‘Asset library’ button at the bottom of the main toolbox.

Now select the ‘Custom Controls’ tab inside the ‘Asset Library’.

Now you have access to the additional controls added. For example, select ‘DockPanel’.

The ‘DockPanel’ control now appears in the toolbox, simply select and draw it’s boundaries onto the design area.

You can only display one Custom Control in the toolbox at a time with the current version of Blend. To switch to a different Custom Control simply repeat the process through the ‘Asset Library’.