This book uses Expression Blend 4 for virtually all recipes in it. You might find it useful to use Visual Studio 2010 (or one of its free "express" editions) for better code editing and development experience, but Expression Blend 4 should be your first choice for this book.

Though the book covers mostly Silverlight 4 and the user interface patterns and user experience guidelines are referring to Silverlight, first few chapters utilize WPF 4 (Windows Presentation Foundation) technology. Almost all ideas, approaches, methods, and guidelines applicable to WPF are also applicable to Silverlight itself.

In order to use and follow all recipes, be sure that, apart from Expression Blend 4 you have installed Silverlight Toolkit. Silverlight toolkit adds support for numerous additional controls of your Silverlight 4 controls. You can get it from http://silverlight.codeplex.com.

The last part of the book showcases usage of the PathListBox control. This control supported under Silverlight 4 is not (at the moment of writing this book) part of the Silverlight or Silverlight Toolkit. Also, effects, pixel shaders, and numerous other features are available to you when you install Expression Blend 4 SDK for Silverlight 4 available for free from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d197f51a-de07-4edf-9cba-1f1b4a22110d&displaylang=en (short link: http://bit.ly/9KaiIG).