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Microsoft Announces Expression Studio

by James Vastbinder on Dec 06, 2006 |

Microsoft yesterday announced Expression Studio targeted at designers or creative professionals. Expression Studio is expected to present a beach head suite of tools in the world rich media applications which are part of Microsoft's strategy for improving the user experience delivered. The Expression family of tools generate XAML which is easily consumed within Visual Studio enhancing the interaction between software designers and developers.

S. Somasegar had this to say about the improved collaboration between developers and designers:

“The Expression family, together with our Visual Studio® development tools and platform technologies, uniquely elevates the craft of design and user experience to the forefront of the software development process. Our goal is to enable designers to collaborate like never before with development teams so together they can raise the bar for user experiences and deliver compelling, rich, immersive, highly usable applications and content across the Web, the Windows desktop, mobile devices and the digital home.”

Microsoft will deliver 4 products as part of Expression Studio:

Expression Web for creating web sites which is available today
Expression Blend for creating rich applications in Windows
Expression Design for creating graphic elements for use on the Internet and Windows
Expression Media for digital asset management.

Planned delivery for the entire Expression Studio is expected in Q2 of 2007. As part of the launch Microsoft created a design professional community that includes forums, video demos and team blogs.