Microsoft phasing out some of its Expression design tools
Summary: Updated: Microsoft is phasing out some of its Expression family of design tools for Windows and Windows Phone. So what's Plan B?
It looks like it's the end of the road for Microsoft's suite of Expression design tools, as Peter Bright over at Ars Technica notes.
Expression Design 4 is being phased out entirely, though it will be patched through 2015. Expression Web 4 also is being dropped. And Expression Blend -- which made it up to Version 5 -- is being folded into bundled with Visual Studio.
Update (December 21): Microsoft changed the wording on December 21 on its Expression Web page. It now says Expression Blend "will continue to ship as a standalone tool with Visual Studio 2012." The phase-out of Expression Web and Expression Design are still proceeding as indicated yesterday.
Microsoft is dropping the Expression name with Blend, a spokesperson said. "Blend will remain a standalone tool shipping with VS2012 (now dubbed Blend for Visual Studio 2012), as part of a complete toolset for designers and developers," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Microsoft first released the Expression tool family, targeted at designers rather than developers, with much fanfare back in the mid-2000s. Expression Web was codenamed Quartz, Expression Blend, Sparkle; and Expression Design was known as Acrylic. A preview build of Expression Blend 5 was bundled in with Visual Studio 2012. Microsoft has been touting Expression Blend as a useful tool for building Windows Store and Windows Phone apps.
In Expression Blend, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight and SketchFlow support are all currently in preview. (The preview is set to expire in July 2013.) According to Microsoft's Expression site, these capabilities will be released in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2. I'm thinking this means Blend will go final by the time of Update 2 -- which should be out some time in the first half of 2013, if Microsoft continues with its current Visual Studio update pace.
"Microsoft is committed to providing best-in-class tools for building modern applications," read an explainer on the Microsoft Expression page. " In support of these industry trends Microsoft is consolidating our lead design and development offerings — Expression and Visual Studio — to offer all of our customers a unified solution that brings together the best of Web and modern development patterns."
The move away from the Blend name and the Expression Studio suite seems somewhat sudden. In comments on a post from August 2012 about the Expression suite, a forum moderator said "We'll share new info about Expression Studio v.next as soon as we have something to share!"
Microsoft shut down its Mix conference, which was targeted at both designers and developers, in 2011, replacing the show with Build, a conference focused on building apps for Windows, Windows Phone and Azure.
What to make of the phase-out of the changes involving the Expression family? I'm not quite sure, and I'm still as doubtful as ever that Microsoft is intending to make a bid to purchase its design-tool rival Adobe. That said, I am curious what Microsoft's suggested tool suite for designers will be, beyond Visual Studio itself.
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Simple
Not anywhere near as much as you.
Re: Not anywhere near as much as you.
I really don't
Lost or
On another note we have a couple of Zune players in our house and it's too bad that one didn't work out. They were nice devices and held up better than the 3 IPods my daughters broke.
Love
Agree. My daughter has had 80 Gig Gen II
It surely seems that way...
It will be interesting to see what direction MS ends up taking with everything. the funny thing is that they seem to be really trying to re-invent MS, but have no plans to re-invent their base code for Windows. They just keep piling new stuff on the tired old kernel and try to convience everyone that they are innovating something.
That being said, MS has the $$$$ to try different things until they have a hit. The thing they do not seem to get is that yesterday is gone and a hit or two only goes so far today. Plus, the cost for MS to create a hit in the media is very high compared to a start-up or someone coming from behind. The price of being number one for so long has taken a long term toll on MS and the cost of an ancient pre-network kernel as a core is showing plenty of ware, charms and all.
On the contrary...
Wrong
Visual Studio is already the best programming environment around, expression was just a watered down subset for designers. No one is going to cry for expression.
In our company we have programmers using visual studio and designers using dreamweaver, which fits them better.
I know that some people like to interpret any move by Microsoft as the end of the world, but that's just an opinion that has nothing to do with reality.
I use
I disagree.
And if Microsoft does buy Adobe? Why should that be an issue for them? Microsoft appears to be shifting their design-space software to the programming space. However, Adobe has the strongest footprint in the design space. Incorporating them doesn't hurt Microsoft at all.
Design
Costs
Double Failure.
VS should be the one tool you ever need....
If all these are consolidated and folded into a single product, perhaps even a VS Designer oriented SKU may be on the blocks; it would be that much easy and pains free for all parties.
Kudos!!!
Re: VS should be the one tool you ever need....
Let's face it, even Eclipse, with all its faults, is better than that.
No clue
While this may be your opinion
Re: While this may be your opinion
Sure