Microsoft Expression Studio 3 review

If you have Visual Studio 2008, your code-behind file can be set to open into this more powerful IDE. Better still, if you're part of a workgroup, you can concentrate on the XAML-based application design and leave the logic to a full-time programmer. Here, Expression Blend 3's support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server means that it can work efficiently together with check-in, check-out and versioning tools.

We're still not completely happy with Expression's output options, as you still can't produce a standalone WPF-based EXE directly from Blend - for this you need the deployment tools found in Visual Studio 2008. You can, however, produce a Silverlight 3 XAP file directly and either add it to a web page using Expression Web 3, or now directly output a hosting HTML page. Expression Blend 3 also makes setting up Silverlight applications that run outside the browser in their own window a straightforward affair.

SketchFlow

With fundamental improvements across the board, Expression Blend 3 is an impressive, if somewhat predictable, release. But with its completely original SketchFlow technology, Microsoft has sprung a major surprise, and it's an important surprise too.

SketchFlow completely reinvents that crucial first stage of application design when you're exploring and roughing out ideas. To help in this prototyping process, the tool lets you quickly map out applications by adding screens and connecting them together.

In this way, you can get an idea of how the end user will move through your application. You can then quickly build up screens using a range of fully functioning controls that share a deliberately sketch-like style: both creative and attractive, but deliberately unfinished.

This is a great way to try out ideas yourself, but it's just as important to try them out on others - especially the client. SketchFlow's animation capability lets you prepare a prototype for presentation without having to add any code, complete with simple storyboard animations that walk through typical scenarios.

And Expression Blend 3 automatically outputs its sketches in a browser-hosted SmartFlow Player application. This comes complete with a navigation panel giving direct access to all screens and animations, and a Feedback panel through which comments can be left and annotations added onscreen.

Conclusion

The SketchFlow Player is itself a brilliant demonstration of what Expression Studio and Silverlight can achieve. It's also a brilliant demonstration of Microsoft's focus on workflow and the way in which Expression Studio can boost both productivity and quality.

There's just one fly in the ointment. Ultimately, it isn't the designer, developer or client who determines the success of a project, it's the end user. Expression Studio 3 might blow Flash Professional and Flash Builder out of the water as the best environment for designing RIAs, but that doesn't mean it's the best choice.

Adobe keeps its hands on the RIA crown thanks to the slight technological superiority of its Flash player and the overwhelming superiority of its take-up, with near-universal cross-platform desktop penetration. Microsoft's Silverlight, in comparison, can boast an install base of fewer than one in three.

Thanks to new power all round and a significant price cut of around a third, Expression Studio 3 provides a modern, creative and efficient RIA authoring platform, and certainly the most attractive yet. Now all Microsoft has to do is win over the consumer.

Author: Tom Arah