Today at Internet Week in New York, we launched Expression Studio 4.
Expression 4 is a suite of professional design tools for building immersive user experiences for the desktop, mobile devices and the web.
There are a lot of new enhancements and exciting features in this release. Here are some of my favorite features of Expression 4.
1. Publishing SketchFlow Prototypes to SharePoint
Publishing your SketchFlow projects that are Silverlight-based to SharePoint provides an easy way to share your prototypes with your team. And the best thing is, once a prototype is published, reviewers can post their feedback right back to SharePoint, making it visible not just to the designers, but also to all other reviewers. Designers can also see feedback from many reviewers concurrently. Collaborative reviews of working, interactive prototypes just got a whole lot better.
2. New Behaviors in Blend
Expression Blend 4 includes new Behaviors designed to enhance your application design process. The new Behaviors enable you to do a lot more while keeping you focused on the art of creating compelling UI designs. Using the new Behaviors, you can for example take advantage of multi-touch, specify fluid transitions between layout changes, define conditional logic or interact more easily with the components of an MVVM application. There are also new Behaviors specifically for SketchFlow, including ones to preserve screen state and to exert greater control over the playback of SketchFlow Animations.
3. Design a UI without writing Code
Expression Blend 4 now lets you design many complex layouts without writing any code.
An example: imagine you want to create a radial list box that arranges its content along a circle, like a carousel. In Blend 4, instead of writing complicated layout code, you can simply draw the desired "shape" of your layout with one or more paths and Blend will take care of arranging the content appropriately. Best of all, this is not just a design time feature, but it works with data-driven list boxes, and supports animation, letting you create incredibly complex, rich and creative layouts as easy as you can draw a path.
4. Write Add-ins for Expression Web with HTML & JavaScript As a web-savvy developer, you are probably comfortable with the languages of the web: JavaScript, HTML and CSS. In Expression Web 4, we have provided a way to extend the app using only the languages you already know. You can now add your own menu items, toolbar buttons, panels and even dialog boxes using only HTML, CSS, JavaScript and a simple XML manifest file. Do you have your own markup for creating online maps in pages? How about a custom Twitter feed? Now you can easily extend Expression Web to make it simple to add this content to any site you are working with.
4. Write Add-ins for Expression Web with HTML & JavaScript
As a web-savvy developer, you are probably comfortable with the languages of the web: JavaScript, HTML and CSS. In Expression Web 4, we have provided a way to extend the app using only the languages you already know. You can now add your own menu items, toolbar buttons, panels and even dialog boxes using only HTML, CSS, JavaScript and a simple XML manifest file. Do you have your own markup for creating online maps in pages? How about a custom Twitter feed? Now you can easily extend Expression Web to make it simple to add this content to any site you are working with.
5. Improve your search rankings with SEO Diagnostics
Our new SEO analysis not only includes the usual checks for duplicate or missing titles, meta tags and headers, but it also checks the content of search sensitive text, like link text and page titles, to make sure they don’t have overly general values like “click here” or “welcome” which aren’t going to add any search value to your pages.
We also include deep help topics that let you understand why these rules are important for getting a good search ranking. This documentation makes our reports more than a simple checklist; it helps you learn and master the art of SEO.
6. Encoding and broadcasting live events
With Expression Encoder 4 you can now broadcast live video to the IIS Smooth Streaming format to ensure uninterrupted playback on Silverlight over HTTP. Select either H.264 or VC-1 output, configure the number and size of the streams then publish directly to servers running IIS Media Services. The redesigned user interface allows you to easily select from multiple live sources and file-based content to create high-quality broadcast output in real time.
We've also used this release as an opportunity to simplify the product line-up of Expression to more closely correspond to the Visual Studio 2010 product family. These are the new Expression 4 products:
Current owners of Expression Studio 3 or Expression Web 3 can upgrade at no additional cost to corresponding version 4 products: Expression Studio 4 Ultimate and Expression Studio 4 Web Professional. Please visit the Expression site to learn more.
Namaste!
Thanks for update and tools released today. I already downloaded and started using this afternoon.
I will say that I'm very disappointed that SketchFlow is not included in the Premium version. I feel that this should be one of the features included. I'm more dissappointed that Microsoft did not make it clear that this would not be included and should have stated up front what each MSDN subcription would support. My development team already purchased VS 2010 Premium w/ MSDN thinking the same features provided in Expression Studio 3 would be included in version 4.
I'm EXTREMELY disappointed that Sketchflow is now only available to the Ultimate subscribers. I've been a happy SketchFlow user since its release, just finished reading the wonderful book 'Dynamic Prototyping', and have a Premium level MSDN subscriber since 1999.
shaggygi, add me to the list disappointed. We received SketchFlow as part of our MSDN subscription as a Microsoft Partner & now it's gone!!
As with the above commenters... what a lame bait-and-switch on including Sketchflow with Blend. You include it in Blend 3 and hype the hell out of it with tutorials, videos, articles, etc, and then yank it out of Blend 4. That leaves MSDN Premium customers who used it in Blend 3 (ahem) in the lurch. On a small team that doesn't use Team System, the added cost of Ultimate makes no sense.
I was rather surprised to see that the expression 4 download (premium) on MSDN does not come pre-pidded but requires an explicit product key request. As I tend to do my development both at the office and at home (so: on two different computers), will this cause problems as far as license validation goes? I did not install it yet on either computer.
I think the new features are great, especially the new Behaviors and Path layout. I've been using Blend 4 for a while now, so I'm glad to get my hands on the release version.
While I personally don't care about SketchFlow, I agree with the sentiment that MS is pulling a Bait and Switch on existing users. I have some other issues too, which I address here: www.developingfor.net/.../expression-studio-4-released.html
One main reason to purchase a Visual Studio Premium with MSDN Subsription has been the included license for the complete Expression Toolset. Especially the use of SketchFlow for Prototyping should become a main part in our development process.
With the yesterday release of Expression 4 I am shocked that SketchFlow is no longer included with a premium subscription. In the new version I no longer can use what was promised to me when ordering the subscription.
What will I have to do to further use SketchFlow? Must i upgrade to a double-priced Ultimate subscrition? My boss won't be amused to hear so. Microsoft, why do you do this? What will next be taken away from my toolset? Scary times are coming...
Microsoft, please give us back Sketchflow!
With version 4, we have taken steps to simplify our design tool offerings for customers and align them more closely with other familiar Microsoft toolsets and resources like Visual Studio and MSDN. At the recent launch of Visual Studio, we also announced Professional, Premium and Ultimate tiers (each tier also containing differing /more features with each respective step-up) and Expression follows the same tiered model.
Customers who purchased Visual Studio Premium from a retailer will receive an offer to purchase Expression Ultimate at a special price of $249.95 within the next few weeks. Volume Licensing customers will receive a 50% discount on purchases of an Expression Ultimate License with Software Assurance. The volume licensing promotion will appear on the volume licensing price list in a few months and of course all MSDN Premium customers will continue to have access to SketchFlow in Expression Studio 3.
Polita Paulus
Microsoft
Polita Paulus, Thank you for your comments. I can't tell from your comments what a Microsoft Certified Partner that gets MSDN Premium is able to do to get Expression Ultimate (apart of just paying the normal price). Is it 50% of the ERP of Expression Ultimate?
What isn't addressed in your comments is why didn't Microsoft tell MSDN Subscribers this upfront and say that SketchFlow will be removed for Expression 4 RTM for Premium customers.
Your comments: "and of course all MSDN Premium customers will continue to have access to SketchFlow in Expression Studio 3". My thoughts: "Windows 3.11 is also included". You get the picture!!
Polita, I hope you are higher up in Microsoft to make any decisions on this, if not, I hope Soma or someone higher is taking note that there are lots of pissed off MSDN Subscribers & developers.
In any case, I certainly won't be begging but I'll be very pissed (putting it very mildly) if we buy Expression Ultimate just to get SketchFlow and find that Microsoft changes soon after and makes available SketchFlow as part of the MSDN Premium.
Please make it available on DreamSpark. I hope we don't get a crippled edition now that there are separate SKUs and what with Expression Media gone.
I can understand about DreamSpark version lacking codecs as MS needs to pay royalties for them but why cripple DreamSpark Expression Encoder by stripping smooth streaming and screen capture??????!!!!!? This is something I hope to see improved in the future.
Leaving out Sketchflow from Expression 4 Premium is nothing short of disgusting. Way to go ahead and make complete morons out of yourselves, guys. This is the #1 most touted feature in Blend, and you're making it Ultimate only, effectively shutting out ALL your partners (including Gold ones!) from making use of it without paying extra.
Looking forward to the retraction post on that decision that will come within the week, I suppose. Just like adding Expression 3 to MSDN in the first place.
KK
For MSDN certified partners we are creating a partner-only Expression Ultimate SKU at a 40% discount. This will be available soon.
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Jon Harris
I'd just like to second the general opinion that taking sketchflow away from MSDN Premium subscribers is ...annoying.
I wasn't aware of the expression "bait and switch" until today, but now I guess I've both heard and experienced it.