Next milestone for Expression tools

Today, we are shipping the first CTP of “Sparkle” (Expression Interactive Designer) and the next CTP of “Acrylic” (Expression Graphic Designer).  You can download the CTP drops for both the products from the Expression website.  As you know, we announced the Expression family of products at PDC05 last September.  Key features of today’s CTP drops include:

• Expression Interactive Designer:  Visual presentation and behavior of controls and UI layout, 2D and 3D animation, a full spectrum of rich media elements include 2D vectors, bitmaps, 3D geometry, media and rich text.

• Expression Graphic Designer:  Now includes expanded XAML export capabilities, allowing graphic designs to be saved as XAML code for inclusion in other design and development tools, such as Visual Studio and Expression Interactive Designer.

Together with the CTP bits, the Expression website (www.microsoft.com/expression) has a bunch of new content including demo videos, training video and the like.  We also have localized versions of the website for our German, French and Japanese users. 

Namaste!