The interactive design and development firm, IdentityMine, recently announced the availability of the of the company's first Blendables™ product release, Community Technology Preview (CTP) version. Ment particularly to empower designers and developers of Windows applications, IdentityMine's Blendables product offering is the packaged result of four years of expertise and experience in working with the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) programming platform. Blendables will be launched as a series of custom WPF controls logically grouped into what IdentityMine defines as a "mix."

    The Blendables Essentials mix, can be used by developers and designers that are able to immediately benefit from a powerful set of utilities uniquely created by IdentityMine from the ground up. IdentityMine's Blendables Essentials gives customers the possibility to quickly and easily enhance their WPF applications without having to spend countless hours learning intricate and advanced development techniques. In the world of application design and development, Blendables Essentials speeds development time by plugging directly into Microsoft Expression Blend.

    Mike Soucie, CEO of Electric Rain, said: "The developer and design community understand both the benefits and intricacies of adopting WPF, and IdentityMine is playing a vital role in increasing WPF's adoption and immediate impact with the new Blendables Essentials mix. These controls will play a role in our newest product, StandOut, which is based entirely on the Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework and WPF."

The following controls are part of the first CTP mix:

 - ElementSnapshot - Offers greater designer creativity by alleviating performance degradation when exploiting advanced visual effects
 - Zoombox - Allows content to be panned in any direction or zoomed in or out using a multitude of user inputs
 - TimelinePanel - generates compelling visualizations that emphasize the chronological nature of a data set
 - Carousel3D - A 3D elliptical layout control with full ItemsControl-like functionality
 - ChromelessWindow - Enables applications to stand out by defining a custom-branded window experience while still keeping the default window chrome functionality
 - NumericRangeToObjectConverter Triggers application behaviors not only on a single value, but on a specific range of values
 - EvalBinding/SimpleBinding - Data binding that adjusts in real-time based not only on application properties, but also off of actual code evaluation
 - DragAndDrop - Enables drag and drop functionality on a number of built-in windows parts such as ListBox, ListView and TreeView
 - OSChecker - Allows a designer to defne a custom application experience contingent with the OS Version
 - Pie - Creates any type of elliptical visual such as pie charts, speedometers and gauges
- all with XAML mark-up

    Ian Ellison-Taylor, general manager of Windows Presentation Foundation at Microsoft Corp, stated: "As a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, IdentityMine has worked extensively with Microsoft for the past four years on WPF and Microsoft Expression Blend. This experience has provided the company with the unique opportunity to gain insight into the most detailed aspects of WPF and to develop tools that specifically cater to the needs of designers and developers looking to further expand their WPF capabilities."

    Chad Brown, senior vice president of products and services for IdentityMine, added: "Since our inception, IdentityMine has been focused on helping our customers redefine the user experience. With the introduction of the Blendables product line, we're essentially packaging our WPF expertise into a product offering designed to ease the adoption of this exciting new platform by empowering the designer and developer alike."

To download a CTP version of Blendables Essentials visit www.blendables.com.