Getting started with Blend for Visual Studio 2012
Blend for Visual Studio 2012 helps you design and build engaging and sophisticated user interfaces by providing you with an accurate design surface and tools that let you visually create and edit Microsoft Windows applications.
Blend is installed when you install Visual Studio. To open , type Blend in the Search box or, in Visual Studio, right-click a project in the Solution Explorer, and then click Open in Blend.
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Getting started with Blend
Learn about the Blend workspace by reading the following topics:
Areas of the workspace Become familiar with the menus, panels, panel groups, and the artboard.
Making more room to work Depending on the work that you are doing, you might want to change the locations of the panels, resize them, or move them out of the Blend window to a different location on the desktop.
Setting workspace colors and fonts Use the Options dialog box to configure your workspace the way you want it.
Building Windows Store apps, Windows Phone apps, SketchFlow prototypes, and WPF and Silverlight applications
Learn how to use Blend to develop for different platforms by reading the following topics:
Windows Store apps For more information about building Windows Store apps, see Blend for Visual Studio on the Windows Dev Center.
Windows Phone apps For more information about building Windows Phone apps, see Blend for Visual Studio on the Windows Phone Dev Center.
Sketchflow prototypes For more information about building SketchFlow prototypes, see Prototyping with SketchFlow.
Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications For more information about building Silverlight and WPF applications, see Managing solutions, projects, and files in Blend.
Community resources
You can find community resources at the following sites: