Expression Answers

Expression Suite Now Free for Students

DougC — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:14:00 GMT

Students are now eligible to download Microsoft's Expression Studio for FREE! Microsoft announced the campaign today to generate more interest in their development tools. They are also offering students the opportunity to download a copy of Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2003. The offer is currently open to students in 11 countries. For more information, go to: https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

Expression Blend 2 August Preview available

DougC — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:34:00 GMT

This week Microsoft unveiled the August Preview of Expression Blend 2. Version 2 of Expression Blend enables users to create Silverlight applications. In addition, the Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate is also available for download.

Download the Expression Blend 2 August Preview here: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/download.aspx?key=blend2preview

Download the Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate here: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/downloads.aspx

Expression Studio is now available for a free 60-day trial

DougC — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:14:00 GMT

Microsoft is now offering a free 60-day trial of the entire Expression Studio package. This package includes: Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media. You can download the free trial from Microsoft here

Expression Blend and Studio now RTM, available soon...

DougC — Tue, 01 May 2007 06:19:00 GMT

At Mix07 today, Microsoft announced that Expression Blend has gone RTM. Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for the software and it will soon be available for purchase in stores. The estimated retail price will be $499 (although the Amazon.com price is showing $459).

Expression Blend will also be available soon in the Expression Studio package which also includes Expression Web, Design and Media and has an ERP of $599. A quick check at Amazon.com shows that they are selling it for $559 and it will be available on March 21st. According to Microsoft's website, Expression Studio also includes Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, (although I don't see any mention of Visual studio on Amazon's page for Expression Studio).

Also available for download is the first preview of Expression Blend 2. This version can create Silverlight-based applications. The download is available here

Several interesting Expression and Silverlight webcasts are now available on Microsoft's Expression website

Expression Web and Blend now part of MSDN

DougC — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:09:00 GMT

Microsoft announced today that Expression Web is now available for download for MSDN Premium subscribers. This is good news to many developers who expected Expression Web to be part of MSDN when it was released several months ago. Microsoft also announced that Expression Blend will also be available to MSDN Premium subscribers once Blend is released (which is expected within the next two months).

Here's the MSDN blog announcement:
http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/04/03/listening-to-your-feedback-expression-and-msdn.aspx

Microsoft releases Beta 2 of Expression Design.

DougC — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:08:00 GMT

This week Microsoft released the Beta 2 version of Expression Design. This version contains mostly bug fixes but also has added support for XAML Export with the live preview feature.

Microsoft Expression Design is a vector-based drawing and editing design tool for creating elements for both web and desktop application user interfaces.

A 180-day trial of the beta 2 version is available from Microsoft here.

Expression Blend Release Candidate Available

DougC — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 04:28:00 GMT

A Release Candidate for Microsoft Expression Blend is now available. This version is the latest release of Expression Blend which is Microsoft's new design tool that can create applications that take advantage of the .NET Framework 3.0 and the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Blend uses XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) which can deliver impressive looking applications for PCs with the .NET Framework 3.0 installed. To run the .NET Framework 3.0 and these applications, the PC must be running Vista or WinXP with SP2.

The Expression Blend RC comes with several Sample applications that show off the capabilities of the design tool. One of these sample applications is "Grand Piano" which is a nice looking and sounding virtual piano. It has the capability of recording your tune and saving it to a file which can be opened and played back later. Unfortunately, the piano only has 12 functional keys, but the application is still impressive with it's graphics and sound.

Other noteworthy samples that come with Expression Blend are "Animation Studio" which is a program which can amimate your drawings and "Color Swatch" which is an interactive application which allows a user to decorate a room by choosing the color of an item and immediately seeing the results.

The final release of Expression Blend is still expected in the second quarter of this year. The Expression Blend RC is available from Microsoft here.

Animation Studio

Grand Piano

Color Swatch

First Book on Expression Web Just Released

DougC — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 06:03:00 GMT

The first book on Microsoft's Expression Web has just been released. The book is called "Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web" by Jim Cheshire. Jim has been an expert FrontPage user (and author) for many years and he has written an easy to read and comprehensive book for anybody wanting to learn how to use Expression Web.

Usually the first book available on a new software release is skimpy in content, but this book contains over 700 pages, covers a lot material, and organizes the chapters in related sections. The book begins by going over the basics of Expression Web including an overview of: the features, the Expression Web interface, the Task Panes and Properties settings. The next section of the book concentrates on how to create and manage an Expression Web web site which includes instructions on how to publish the site and offers tips on how to overcome common problems.

Several chapters explain how to use Expression Web to create and use Cascading Style Sheets in a web site. It also gives a clear explanation of how you can use them external, embedded and inline. Later chapters get into more complex topics such as Javascript coding which includes several useful examples on how to verify data in form fields and how to preload images. Even VBA macros are explained which can cut your time when performing repetitive tasks.

Finally, the book spends several chapters going over ASP.NET features such as the AdRotator, Calendar, SiteMapPath, the Master Page and the Wizard Control. Using some of the ASP.NET controls can be challenging for a user who is inexperienced in using them, and the author does a good job of explaining each step and has plenty of screenshots which make it easy to follow along.

The book comes with a CD-ROM which contains such goodies as: code samples from the book, the entire text of the book in PFD format, and full working versions of Logo Creator and DHTML Menu Builder Lite. The author also maintains a web site (http://www.jimcobooks.com) which contains Flash-based Expression Web tutorials along with useful information for FrontPage users who are upgrading to Expression Web.

This book is packed with information on Expression Web and would be a great book for any beginner or intermediate user of the software. At over 700 pages and with a CD containing useful code and software tools, the price of $39.99 is a good price too. The book is available at retailers such as Amazon and Borders.

Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web by Jim Cheshire
Que Publishing, ISBN: 978-0789736055

Expression Blend Beta 2 Now Available

DougC — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:01:00 GMT

This week Microsoft released a newer version of Expression Blend. The Beta 2 version is now available for download here. Some of the changes for this version include:

You can now instantiate resources from the Resources panel. For example, you can drag and drop a button style onto the artboard and create a button out of it instead of creating a button and applying it as a separate task.
You can see inner exceptions when an exception happens on the design surface, allowing you to see more details about the cause of an exception.
You now get font previews in the Text category of the Properties panel which makes it easier to choose your font.
After adding an event handler, the XAML file is now automatically saved for you.
Configuring value editors has been improved. For example, you'll find editing BitmapEffects or adding items to an ItemsControl such as ContextMenu are now much easier to do.

PayPal eCommerce Toolkit for Expression Web Now Available

DougC — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:53:00 GMT

Today WebAssist announced the availability of their PayPay eCommerce Toolkit for Expression Web. After installing this Toolkit, you can easily add features such as "Pay Now" and "Add to Cart" by using the Insert/PayPal menu item that gets integrated into Expression Web's menu. After dropping the PayPal button on your web page, a wizard walks you through the steps to configure your payment (PayPal email address, shipping cost, etc). It appears to be a very useful and well written add-in for Expression Web.

It's hard to tell whether or not it's just a current promotion, but for now the PayPal eCommerce Toolkit is being offered for free. The Toolkit is available here: https://www.webassist.com/professional/products/productdetails.asp?PID=118

Microsoft releases Design Portfolio Starter Kit for Expression Web

DougC — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 01:59:00 GMT

Microsoft recently released a starter kit for Expression Web which can enable you to quickly get a sharp looking website up and running. Out of the box, this starter kit contains a website template which can display the various offerings in a designer's portfolio; however, the website can be easily modified for other purposes.

The design portfolio website has three main parts: the main page which spotlights several "featured" portfolios, another page which shows all of the designer's portfolios, and a contact page which contains a form which gets sent to the email address of your choice.

The main page (default.aspx) provides a text area for a description about yourself or company, then to the right are several images that are displayed which spotlight your "Featured" works. The images that appear on this page are easily configurable by having the "featureItem" element set to "true" in the "portfolio.xml" file. This xml file defines the descriptions, images and links that make up the various portfolios.

A nice feature to this website is when you place your mouse cursor over a "Featured" item, a small window will "bubble up" and give you a summary about that item. The window also includes a "View Full Details" link which takes you to a separate page with more detailed information about that particular item. This additional information is also held in the "portfolio.xml" file.

The "Work" menu button takes the user to a page which shows all of the designer's portfolios. This page also has the "bubble up" window feature for each image which generates its own page after clicking on the "View Full Details" link. All of the items generated for the Work page come from entries in the "portfolio.xml" file.

The "Contact" page is your basic "contact us" type page. There are several fields for name, email address, comment and a dropdown box which contains various designer job titles. This page also uses a few ASP.NET validation controls to ensure the user has entered a valid email address and all required fields have some data. This page also uses ASP.NET controls to send the user's information to an email address which is configured in the web.config file.

The Design Portfolio website doesn't have a wide variety of content areas by default, but it does deliver a fully functional, data driven website with some nice eye candy features. Users can easily add more areas of content and tailor the site to their needs. The Expression Web Design Portfolio starter kit is a free download from Microsoft and can be downloaded here.