Expression Studio Ships

Expression Studio, Microsoft’s suite of tools for graphic designers working on Web sites, applications, and other user interfaces, shipped in May 2007. However, one component was still not finished and was scheduled to ship later via the Web. Like Silverlight, Expression Studio is aimed at an emerging category of designers and developers working on what Microsoft calls User Experience (UX), a term that incorporates user interface, usability, and the overall satisfaction of the user.

Expression Studio includes several tools for UX designers.

Expression Web is a design tool for creating Web sites and applications using common standards such as Cascading Style Sheets and XHTML. It effectively replaces FrontPage as Microsoft’s Web creation tool for nondevelopers.

Expression Blend allows designers to combine video, text, vector graphics, and bitmap images to create animations based on XAML. The resulting XAML can be incorporated into Web sites using Silverlight or into desktop applications using the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Expression Blend supports two-way XAML editing with Visual Studio, allowing a designer and developer to work together on a XAML-based project with each editing the XAML using their preferred tool. For example, a designer can use Expression Blend to edit a XAML-based animation and the developer will automatically see those changes in Visual Studio, and vice versa.