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Ok so I found out today that Microsoft have released Expression.

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/default.mspx

If you haven't heard its Microsoft's New design suite that if you take a close looks closely resembles products made by Adobe the products being Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks/Photoshop. Ok so they are not exactly the same but Microsoft is suddenly all about experession and these products have been made to compliment Vista.

Basically they have 3 pieces of software called Graphic Design, Interactive Design, and Web Design. Now looking over the products they supprisngly look quite good.

While the Graphic design package has plenty of ground to catch up on Adobe it looks alot easier than Fireworks, however I would much prefer Photoshop anyday, the option to have Vector and Pixel based layers in the one composition is a very handy feature. Microsoft are not claiming this product as anything other than a design program for on-screen graphics. It does look very good though for any basic and even semi-decent on-screen work.

The Interactive designer looks like it creates Flash like interfaces for your applications. It does however include 3d which is an interesting feature, however Information seems to be limited at this present time to if this technology would be able to be utilised in anything other than a windows application. It would be good if this could be used in conjunction with asp.net 2.0 as web applications however it has a long way to go to catch up with Flash if Microsoft intend to go that direction. At the moment I think it looks set to be only for your standard windows applications.

The Web Designer looks to me to be the software we all will need to go out and buy. It kicks the web designer in visual studio and deffinately kicks Visual Web Developer Express. Everything is clean. No big annoying area headings that screw around with your page layout. Everything is based of CSS design and really it looks alot closer to dreamweaver than to Visual studio. But it still keeps all the functionality that we need to build great asp.net 2.0 applications.

Let me know what you guys think.

 Thanks

Kris

Kris,

I was a Macromedia fan for years and swore by Dreamweaver and Fireworks. I never cared much for Adobe programs, but recognized that they definitely were the programs to beat - particularly in graphic design for print.

An interesting thing happened a few months ago -- as I started learning ASP.NET 2.0, I started using Visual Studio, and while there are times I miss some of the features DW offers, I don't think I'll be upgrading my Adobe/Macromedia Suite of products -- unless of course they offer a ridiculously cheap upgrade price.

I tried the Community Technology Previews of Microsoft's web designer and graphics programs several months ago. They are definitely going to compete seriously with the Adobe/Macromedia products. They're good, and they're not quite ready to be sold yet. These CTP's come out monthly I believe, and the people trying them need to uninstall/install the new CTP -- I don't have the time to do that and be an unpaid beta tester! I saw enough to realize that the programs were going to be pretty darned good, that they will integrate very nicely with any work I do in ASP.NET, and provided that they offer the programs (initially, at least) at a low enough price when released, they will definitely get a chunk of the market. One of the flaws I've heard is that the web design program does not play nicely with other technologies like PHP, Cold Fusion etc.

Their intention, from what I've read, is to offer Expressions as a solution for the "web designer" while Visual Studio (and its cousins, the Express Editions) is geared for the "web developer." Since I consider myself to be a hybrid - a "Designer/Developer" I like to have both kinds of tools available!

I've signed up for an MSDN free webinar on Expressions scheduled for Tuesday August 29th... if anyone is interested, the information is here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032306063 -- I figured it will be great to hear their plans for release and see the latest features.

It's no surprise we live in a very competitive world and many products out there have similar options so I don't think it's just a Microsoft thing,  I can't remember the last time I have seen a fresh idea that wasn't copied in some way from what is already out and popular it's just the way it is.

I'm excited to see Microsoft coming out with so many tools for the developers, designers, students, and the people that want to do all these things as a hobby. Hopefully this will allow everyone to be a lot more productive by combining all these technologies and having a standardized way of doing so (css and xml for example). What does this mean to the average consumer? Better looking applications (windows and web based), websites that are not broken when viewed by specific browsers, and a whole lot more applications (hopefully the kind that actually makes our lives easier, without dealing with frequent application bugs). We'll see if we do indeed see all these things next year.

I think its great to see a design tool that uses asp.net 2.0 that looks more like dreamweaver, but then again new adobe products come out early 07 I assume dreamweaver might have a bit more support for .net 2.0.

Either way it's a step in the right direction I think.

Kristofor:

I think its great to see a design tool that uses asp.net 2.0 that looks more like dreamweaver, but then again new adobe products come out early 07 I assume dreamweaver might have a bit more support for .net 2.0.

Either way it's a step in the right direction I think.

Kristofor, I've been hearing on some of the forums that the next versions of the Adobe/Macromedia software will NOT have any support for ASP.NET 2.0 - they are focusing their efforts on Cold Fusion, PHP etc., and leaving the Microsoft side completely untouched. Just like Microsoft isn't providing Cold Fusion support in their products. I guess it makes sense.

We shall see. Honestly, I'm hoping that Microsoft's Expression line is very good, because I'm sure they'll include that in my Action Pack - which means I will be able to save my money and not upgrade my Macromedia Suite! 

MrBruce:

One of the flaws I've heard is that the web design program does not play nicely with other technologies like PHP, Cold Fusion etc.

 

I dont necesarrilly think that it was a "flaw", but more like a strategic omission.  Microsoft has never released an application that supports competing technologies.  Look at frontpage, if you loaded a php page in it, it had a seizure.  Or when Microsoft put code in Windows that crashed your Palm pilot (back when palm first became popular).  It is nothing new from the sneaky giant.

 

Anywho, I am glad microsoft is releasing this new package.  Especially since the future of Macromedia studio is a '?' since Adobe has taken control.

Yes, Microsoft has released Microsoft Expression Studio 2 with the goal to seperate the designers from the developers, yet producing well-made applications. I don't know the marketing of these, but these are great tools for developing. Also, XAML is very nice, and also with Microsoft Silverlight that are nice, too. I'm just playing with it, and also it's lovely with Visual Studio 2008. The disadvantage I came accross was I'm used to the "Magic Wand" tool that Adobe Photoshop has, and I don't think they have it, or have a similar tool to do so.

There a lot of advantages with the thing such as the cost, but I'm a student, and so I don't know much about it than the professionals know.

* Why such as long, unnessesary subject title, jeeze?

title... so true.

I got used to Photoshop myself.. Haven't tried Expression graphics tool. Other than missing "Magic Wand", is it good?

I don't know I even need the "Magic Wand", they might have something I would do with the wand, but with a similiar or better method. As for Expression, the .I. is quite nice, and the workflow is great for me. It has nice tools to design, and then develop with Visual Studio 2008.

 Expression designs for the web, and windows applications, which is quite cool. The techonology is new so not much shows much what the tools can really do.