VERDICT Plenty of design-rich development power for producing desktop EXEs - but the new browser-hosted Silverlight applications promise more than they currently deliver.
Everyone’s computing experience depends on the richness of the applications that they use both on the desktop and on the web. However there’s always been a factor holding that richness in check: a fundamental and frustrating chasm between the designer working on application presentation and the developer working on application logic. Just over a year ago Microsoft unveiled its ground-up solution to the problem and now, with Expression Studio 2, it is building on those foundations.

VERDICT Minor tweaks leave Expression Media looking even more old-fashioned, under-powered and out of its depth.
Microsoft Expression Studio is designed to provide end users with the richest computing experience possible so advanced media handling should be key. Unfortunately this obvious requirement seemed to pass Microsoft by so that, rather than developing its own visual file manager, it was forced to buy in an existing third-party solution at the last moment. Worse the program it picked, iView MediaPro, was ugly, awkward and well past its sell-by date.

VERDICT Top-of-the-range video preparation and encoding together with Silverlight-based web playback should give Encoder a winning edge – but doesn’t quite.
There’s one media format that can make or break the computing experience – video. That’s why it’s so important to get the right balance between quality and file size and why both Adobe and Microsoft provide dedicated video encoders. Surprisingly, despite Adobe’s longstanding video experience, this is one area where Microsoft outscores its rival.

Tom Arah gets to grips with Microsoft’s new Expression Studio and Silverlight platforms and wonders how they will fare against Adobe’s Flash.

Recently I looked at how Adobe is reworking Flash in preparation for the coming battle with Microsoft over the Rich Internet Application (RIA) space and, with it, the likely future of computer-based design...

Microsoft pulls off an extraordinary feat reinventing desktop application design, but it's only the taste of things to come regarding the web.

For years now there has been talk of Microsoft’s determination to move into the design software territory normally associated with Adobe. Now, with the launch of the Expression Studio suite, the talk is over – so how does it shape up?

VERDICT: Bizarrely antiquated and underpowered creative asset management.

To give a general boost to its professional design credentials and in particular to its Expression Studio suite, Microsoft decided that it needed an application for managing media assets and so bought up iView MediaPro 3...

Tom Arah looks at Microsoft’s upcoming Expression Studio and its underlying WPF and XAML-based strategy.

Key to understanding Microsoft's future plans is an appreciation of Windows Vista’s new presentation subsystem, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)...

In May Microsoft released new previews of Expression Graphic Designer, Expression Web Designer and Expression Interactive Designer.

It’s clear that Microsoft is preparing a new suite of applications aimed at a new target market - designers and creative professionals. So how are the new pretenders shaping up?