Microsoft Expression Studio

Microsoft Expression Studio is a suite of design and media applications from Microsoft aimed at developers and designers. It consists of:

• Microsoft Expression Web (code-named Quartz) - WYSIWYG website designer and HTML editor.
• Microsoft Expression Blend (code-named Sparkle) - Visual user interface builder for Windows Presentation Foundation applications.
• Microsoft Expression Design (code-named Acrylic) - Raster and vector graphics editor.
• Microsoft Expression Media - Digital asset and media manager.
• Microsoft Expression Encoder - VC-1 content professional encoder.

Overview

Of these products, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Encoder have themselves been written using Windows Presentation Foundation. Expression Web is the successor to Microsoft FrontPage, however it features significant differences from FrontPage, such as using its own rendering engine, rather than Internet Explorer's Trident layout engine. All the FrontPage bots and functions have also been removed. Expression Media is largely based on its predecessor iView Media which Microsoft acquired in June 2006. The technology from Expression Design is also based on a previously acquired product, Creature House Expression, however, Expression Design has been entirely rewritten in WPF. Microsoft introduced Expression on 16 September 2005 at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Expression Encoder was introduced at NAB 2007. Microsoft Expression Studio was released to manufacturing on 30th April, 2007. The RTM news was announced at Microsoft's MIX 07 conference for web developers and designers. ^[1] Expression Web, Expression Blend and Expression Media can also be purchased individually. Expression Design is only available as part of Expression Studio. Expression Encoder is only available for Windows. It was released to manufacturing on September 6, 2007.

See also

• List of raster graphics editors
• Comparison of raster graphics editors
• Microsoft FrontPage, the predecessor to Expression Web
• Creature House Expression, the predecessor to Expression Design
• iView Media, the predecessor to Expression Media

External links

• Microsoft Expression Studio - The official page
• Expression Customer Spotlight - Expression case studies
• Microsoft Expression team blog - News, samples, tutorials
• Q&A: Microsoft Unveils Next Generation of Web Authoring and Design Tools
• Expression Web Add-ins - FrontLook Add-ins for Microsoft Expression Web; Java Effects, Component Effects and Site Search Engine