GfxDiary

The three professional-level Expression tools are designed to leverage the capabilities of the upcoming Windows Vista platform.

Microsoft made the introduction of the Expression tools this week at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference. The choice of venue was significant, since it could have instead chosen Seybold Seminars Chicago, which earlier this week hosted the unveiling of QuarkXPress 7. But the Expression products are not about designing for print. Rather, their focus is the creation of sophisticated Web sites and interfaces for applications that take advantage of Microsoft's long-anticipated followup to Windows XP, Vista, and the acompanying Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly known as Avalon.

Better than any other OS provider, Microsoft knows its developers. So rather than leaving it to third-parties to create tools to exploit the capabilities of Vista, as well as the platform and services technologies on which it has bet the farm, such as .NET Framework and XML, it has wisely chosen to create its own tools to ensure rapid and deep adoption of the new capabilities of Vista. This also ensures it's not shut out of rapidly-shifting Web development trends that are increasingly being dominated by competitors such as Google. For example, WPF introduces Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), "which enables developers and designers to use an XML-based model to declaratively specify the desired user interface (UI) behavior."

If this approach sounds like something that will most likely be embraced within the enterprise, you're correct. Microsoft has wisely chosen to not tackle the consumer market with this first rollout, although "lite" versions may already be on the drawingboard.

Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer
Previously known as Acrylic, this has been the most visible of the three products, with an open "technology preview" program and comment forum garnering significant mindshare in the Windows graphics community. Microsoft recently made a new version available for free download, although for how much longer is unclear. Graphic Designer is notable for providing both vector and bitmap image editing capabilities, and provides a wide range of natural media and other interesting image creation and editing capabilities, notably with editable Live Effects. Design elements can be exported to the usual formats, in addition to WPF.

Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer
Known as Sparkle, Interactive Designer can be thought of as a way to integrate vector and bitmap graphics, 3D content, video and audio, text and animation within a design environment for creating user interfaces for apps and Web delivery. Sound familar? Yes, but again everything here is tied to the capabilities of Vista, as well as connecting to XAML and Microsoft Visual Studio. Flash killer? What's Flash? Never heard of it.

Microsoft Expression Web Designer
Bearing the Quartz moniker, Web Designer is a CSS-driven site creation tool that predictably is designed to interoperate with the other two members of the Expression family, as well as Visual Studio. Web Designer also provides support for XML, ASP.NET and XHTML. It will be interesting to see if Web Designer is optimized in any way to create sites for the upcoming Explorer 7 browser.

Microsoft is still adding information to the Expression area of its site, with demos and product info a bit uneven at this point.