Expression Blend 2 AddIns

Introduction

Expression Blend has an add-in model that allows developers to write add-ins to extend its functionality. Unfortunately this is mainly unknown to most users of blend. A prominent example is the intellisense addin for blend.

Popular Addins

• Unify - AddIn Manager for Expression Blend
• PluginManager - Loads all addins from a directory
• Colorful - Access color palettes from Adobe Kuler
• Blendsense - Brings IntelliSense to Expression Blend

How to Load and Run an AddIn

To load and run an addin into expression, just pass a command parameter -addin followed the name of the add-in dll. You don't need any registration of plug-ins, but you can load only one addin on the same time. To get over this limitation you can use an add-in manager that dynamically loads multiple plugins even without restarting the tool.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Blend 2\Blend.exe /addin:NameOfTheAddin.dll