Working with built-in behaviors

Microsoft Expression Blend includes a variety of built-in behaviors that you can apply to objects that you create by dragging the behavior onto the element that you want to affect. Some behaviors work as soon as you apply the behavior. Others require the modification of properties in the Properties panel before they are enabled.

The following sections provide an overview of some of the built-in behaviors available in Expression Blend. The lists of behaviors in each section are not comprehensive, and some behaviors may appear in more than one category.

Animation behaviors

You can apply a behavior to a storyboard or use a behavior to animate a transition so that the transition appears smoother than it would without the behavior.

For more information about animation behaviors, see Animation behaviors.

Conditional behaviors

You can use conditional behaviors to link an action to event when a comparison evaluates to True. You can quickly apply conditions to actions by creating and modifying conditions in the Properties panel.

For more information about conditional behaviors, see Conditional behaviors.

Data behaviors

You can use data behaviors to interact with data in a variety of ways, including adding and modifying properties by using a data store, applying visual state changes based on data comparisons, and firing specific actions based on changes to the data store.

For more information about data behaviors, see Data behaviors.

Motion behaviors

You can use behaviors to affect the movement of an element on the screen.

For more information about motion behaviors, see Motion behaviors.

Triggers

When you add an action to the artboard in Expression Blend, an EventTrigger is created by default. You can use any of the additional built-in triggers in Expression Blend by changing the trigger type. To change the trigger type, click New in the Trigger category in the Properties panel.

For more information about animation behaviors, see Triggers.

Visual state behaviors

You can use a behavior to trigger visual state changes in the element to which the behavior is applied.

For more information about visual state behaviors, see Visual state behaviors.