Microsoft Expression Blend review

Expression Blend is the central component of the new Expression Studio suite and of Microsoft's drive to become a major player in the world of design software. In particular, Expression Blend is targeted at the RIA space that Microsoft sees as the natural evolution of today's desktop applications, enabling them to offer a richer end-user experience and greater reach through increasingly internet-based delivery. It's new territory for Microsoft, but it brings the company head-to-head with software giant Adobe and the current market-defining RIA product, Flash.

Designing with XAML

To compete with Flash, Expression Blend needs to offer something special, and it does. XAML is a new markup language that may eventually approach the significance of that other markup language, HTML. While HTML is concerned with describing the semantic content of a web page, XAML goes far beyond it to describe the presentational surface of an application. This ties in directly to the new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) that underpins much of Microsoft's work on Vista and enables easy control of all those design-rich features that Flash pioneered (vectors, bitmaps, text, audio, video, interactivity, server-side integration and animation), and throws in a couple of brand-new capabilities (adaptive layouts and 3D) for good measure.

As a text-based XML language, XAML can be viewed and edited in Expression Blend's dedicated XAML view. However, Expression is a design tool and designers are generally uncomfortable with code, so such direct editing will be a relatively rare option, especially since any mistake means your entire application disappears from the Design view until it's fixed. Instead, designers will primarily take advantage of the hands-on toolset.

Bitmaps and vectors

Using the Rectangle, Ellipse, Line and Pen tools, you can quickly add core shapes and then control them using the main Properties panel running down the right of the screen. Formatting control is extensive, with the ability to apply solid, gradient and tiled brushes to fills, strokes and opacity masks. Other options include applying transforms such as rotations, and managing grouping, alignment, distribution and stacking order. You can also quickly add non-destructive blur, drop shadow, emboss, glow and bevel bitmap effects. For more advanced vector-based creativity, you can import or copy and paste XAML-based artwork from the Expression Design application.

To move beyond vectors to add external bitmaps, audio and video, you must first add the files to the Project panel and then insert them onto the artboard. All formats that are supported by Windows Media Player 10 can be imported, including all the main standards: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, MP3, WMA, WAV, AVI, MPEG and WMV. You can also add 3D models in the Wavefront OBJ format and then use the Camera Orbit tool to position and rotate them in 3D space. Similar 3D camera-based control is also offered for imported bitmaps. Most impressive visually is the ability to apply any existing elements as a brush, which is great for creating subtle shadow and reflection effects - just beware the coming invasion of 3D video projections.

Getting animated

All design elements can also be brought to life using timelines. To create an animation, simply add and name a new timeline, which automatically switches on timeline recording. You can then move the timeline playhead to a given time, change any properties to automatically create keyframes and then, optionally, right-click on the resulting animation bars to set a repeat count. This property-based keyframe approach to animation is far easier to set up and edit than Flash's awkward tween-based approach, but it isn't suited for frame-by-frame animations.