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Microsoft formally unveiled the Expression family of design tools at last September’s Professional Developers Conference and late yesterday released Community Technology Previews of two of them: Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer (“Sparkle”) and Expression Graphic Designer “Acrylic”). There was no word on Expression Web Designer (“Quartz”).
If, at first glance, all of these products seem confusing, the new Expression Team Blog puts them in their place:
Microsoft Expression is a suite consisting of three products each intended for use mainly by the professional designer community. Expression Graphic Designer [Acrylic - ed.] is a visual arts package equally at home with vector or with bitmap graphics. Expression Interactive Designer [Sparkle - ed.] gives interaction designers the environment in which to build Windows applications for the Windows Presentation Foundation platform – in other words, to build the new Vista-wave generation of Windows user experiences. Expression Web Designer [Quartz - ed.] is the product which offers all the tools you’ll need to produce high-quality, standards-based Web sites.
For lots more information, videos and downloads about Expression, please see the Microsoft Expression product website.
They are all based on the Windows Presentation Framework (“Avalon”) coming in WinFX with Vista and to be available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as well. Finally, note that there is a separate design tool for developers codenamed “Cider” coming in the future “Orcas” release of Visual Studio.
Yesterday’s announcement of the “Go-Live” licences for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, formerly Indigo) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) overshadowed the January Community Technical Preview (CTP) of WinFX. All the pieces of the CTP (excluding the “Go-Live” licenses) are now online for public download and nicely summarized by Ryan Storgaard here.
Worthy of special note is the optional Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Community Technology Preview – Development Tools for WinFX which includes “Cider,” a visual designer for the new Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon). Orcas, of course, is the next version of Visual Studio which will only be available sometime after WinFX ships with Vista and for prior operating systems.
It looks like there is more information to come, but here’s the Q&A:
Microsoft today marked a milestone on the path toward completing the Windows Vista programming model, WinFX, by announcing the availability of Go Live licenses for Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation technologies. Along with the WinFX January Community Technology Preview (CTP), these new resources are meant to give millions of .NET developers a leg up on next-generation application design. All three releases are available now from the MSDN Download Center.
It’s followed by the actual Q&A with Ari Bixhorn, Microsoft Director of Web Services Strategy. If you aren’t familiar with “Go-Live” licenses, they allow Microsoft customers to “go live” with Microsoft beta software in production environments and get minimal support. Not for the faint of heart even if the software has to be mostly complete for the licenses to be offered. As for the versions of WinFX, WCF (previously Indigo), and WWF promised, I haven’t seen them yet but I would presume they are for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 (or R2) and not Vista.
Update 6:40 PM: All of the releases are indeed just for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The WinFX release (labeled January CTP) doesn’t have a Go-Live license, but the new WCF and WWF versions (labeled Beta 2) do have available Go-Live licenses as described here. Microsoft has apparently detached them from the overall WinFX distributable. Since the Go-Live license doesn’t allow licensees to distribute the code, any deployments have to be entirely internal to the licensing company.
Mary Jo Foley at Microsoft Watch has details on new features and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, aka Avalon) hasn’t been forgotten, but a Go-Live license is NOT being offered:
Microsoft is not releasing a Go-Live license for Windows Presentation Foundation because this software does not require the type of scalability testing necessary for the other two technologies, according to Microsoft.
Note that Microsoft also has a full support but limited participation Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for customers who want to try running pre-release software in production.
(Via Brandon LeBlanc) It had been anticipated that Microsoft would release the November CTP of Vista either yesterday or today, but WinBeta reports:
*UPDATE* Microsoft sources confirmed this morning (Friday) that they are still compiling 5259 builds and have yet to settle on one they are willing to release. Until this is achieved, testers and enthusiasts alike will settle back and wait.
There are currently no plans to release any more interim builds after the November CTP until beta 2 although Microsoft said that that is open to change if they feel there are builds beta testers should receive.
On the other hand, the WinFX November CTP was released. Tim Sneath:
This release is particularly exciting, because it is based on the final .NET Framework 2.0 bits. You’ve no excuse now for not installing WinFX and starting to prototype a great Windows Presentation Foundation application!
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My esteemed colleague Karsten Januszewski has stepped up to the mark and produced a great white paper (he’s posting it to his blog today) that describes the new features added to WPF in this CTP release (there’s some great new animation work that’s exposed here) as well as highlighting the API breaking changes since the PDC release. We’re gradually getting closer to being API complete for the first release – there’s probably just one more set of breaking changes to go in that will be exposed in a CTP release in the first month or two of next year, but otherwise we’re entering the glidepath – starting to focus on performance and stability beyond all other considerations. It’s going to be an exciting year!
See Karsten Januszewski’s and Lori Pearce’s posts for more, but in case the distinction isn’t clear, the WinFX CTP is only supported on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
