Microsoft Expression

istartedsomething dug up something interesting from the Steve Ballmer presentation at the Microsoft Show and Tell 2007. It’s a roadmap for Microsoft products for the fiscal year of 08 and beyond! Some things caught my attention: Expression Studio V2 - there will be a new version of the Expression series pretty soon Microsoft Tellme - this can be really cool. Windows Server 2008 Update Release and Service Pack 1 - wonder what nice stuff they have in the pipeline for these releases… Microsoft Surface - it will be a real product and is not just a showcase! It’s worth browsing through the whole PowerPoint by Steve Ballmer.

This part of the Dissecting XPS series will introduce the XPS parts of the Microsoft.NET 3.0 framework and where you should look to get started creating XML Paper Specification documents. Windows Presentation Foundation, WPF The XPS classes is a part of the Windows Presentation Foundation, WPF, and is found under the System.Windows.Xps namespace. The Open Packaging Convention classes, used to manipulate the packages is found under the System.IO.Packaging namespace. To get you started with creating XPS documents with the .NET 3.0 Framework you should read the January 2006 article in the MSDN Magazine by Bob Watson which explains it all. It contains everything you need to know from reading to writing to signing XPS documents.

Microsoft Expression Design, version 1.0 is now available for a 60 days trial download, was one product I had big hopes for during the CTP cycle, but now it’s just a simple vector editor. Ok, I’ve said this before and this is not what this post is about… If you now use Design to create images and drawings you have the excellent option of saving or exporting your file in numerous formats other than the Expression Design format; such as GIF, JPEG, PNG, Photoshop format etc. You can even export it to a PDF file, which is great for example when you have a sketch you would like to send to your business partner or friend.

Microsoft has decided to make the Expression Blend and Expression Web products available for all MSDN Premium subscribers. This is great news for all developers, and a great enhancement to the MSDN subscription. The Expression Design application will not be included in the MSDN subscription and neither will Expression Media. I surely can understand why Media is not in but I think that Design should be included. Blend will help developers making nice WPF applications and Web will help out when making nice websites, but there is great need for nice graphics on a website and therefore I think Design should be included in the MSDN subscription.

Just a few days ago Microsoft Epression Blend RC was released and now Expression Design beta 2 is available for download. The first beta of Design was a real disappointment for me, since all pixel editing and all Live Effects was removed. Beta 2 is still only vector editing but the Live Effects are there. The focus seems to be the Design/Blend/XAML/WPF integration to start with, which is fine but the technical previews of Design (then called Interactive Designer) really had it wen you could combine vector and pixel layers.

Today I start my two weeks vacation and I thought I should summarize this year. The year of 2006 has been characterized, for me, as the year of Betas and Technology Previews. I have been trying to involve myself as much as possible in the all the goodies flowing out of Redmond. Microsoft has released numerous amount of new applications and upgrades. Internet Explorer 7 The new version of Internet Explorer is the application this year that will have most impact in the short run on users. More standardized and a slicker interface with support of for example blogs.

Expression Design was released yesterday as the December 2006 CTP . The major change was a brand new user interface and a lot of missing functionality from earlier previews. According to the Expression team at the Microsoft newsgroups it just seems that the missing functionality in Design is simply gone due to lack of time. Currently I have noticed that the Live Effects are not present in this CTP, but they are documented in the help files. Pixel layers seems to be completely gone and no reference in the help file - so I doubt they will be back :-(

Microsoft today announced huge changes to the Microsoft Expression suite. Expression Studio Expression Studio is a new member of the Expression suite and is a suite of tools for building web sites and Windows client programs and rich media content. The Expression Studio consits of the four core Expression products; Web, Blend, Design and Media. Expression Design Expression Design, formerly known as Graphics Designer, has come in yet another CTP. The big news here is a complete new user interface, at first glance it looks much better than the old one.

On Microsoft Connect I discovered that Microsoft Expression Graphics Designer and Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer has recieved new names. Interactive Designer has become Expression Blend and Graphics Designer Expression Design. Anybody know anything about this?

For me this second quarter of 2006 has been so interesting with all these beta and CTP products from Microsoft. The summer will be a long wait for the Release Candidates and the autumn a huge and shaky wait for the gold products. Here is a short summary of what i think so far; **Microsoft Expression Graphics Designer**An interesting product which I have big hopes for, I really like, and have just adjusted, to the vector way of doing my graphics.

There are a lot of downloads today; the new CTP of Microsoft Expression Graphics Designer was announced today. You can download it here. There are also a new CTP of the Interactive Designer. I did some initial tests by exporting images to Gif and Jpegs - and it seems to work much better now, great!!! Remember to download WinFX Beta 2!

So, after some installation trouble the Microsoft Expression Web Designer was installed, read more about it in the EWD Discussion group.The Expression Web Designer is for me a new and improved FrontPage more focused on the layout. I made some initial pages/sites and I feel that it works pretty smoothly to work with. The target group for this product is purely front-end/html programmers.The EWD will complement the Visual Studio development but the lack of source control integration is not just irritating - it’s a “application breaker”. I think the usage of EWD when building large and complex projects will not be that high if this is not implmented. I think my company will still be using Visual Studio for editing webpages for a while….I also lack a nice integration with the Expression Graphics Designer, it would be nice to right-click an image and open the EGD editor within EWD! (When is the next CTP/beta/Gold for EGD coming???) But, I think I’ll give it a shot and try to use it some more before I give it my final judgement. Do you agree or disagree?

Finally there is a CTP of Microsoft Expression Web Designer.I have been working with the Microsoft Expression softwares now for a while and I like what I see and use. I really hopes that this version of the Expression suite really fits my needs, since I work a lot with web development. The Expression Graphics Designer, which is the one i have used a lot the last few months is really nice, but I think making (small) pixelbased images which are used for web is not that smooth.Download is complete, time to install it. I will get back with some more Impressions of Expression in a while.Update: The download from the Microsoft download site did not work out correctly, but the download from connect.microsoft.com installed fine!