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...

VERDICT: Radical improvement of the production workflow for desktop application development - and of the results that can be achieved.

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...

VERDICT: Disappointingly cut-down graphics application designed to work hand-in-hand with Expression Blend.

When Microsoft bought the innovative graphics application, Creature House Expression, there was brave talk of taking on Adobe Illustrator in terms of vector handling, Photoshop in terms of bitmaps and Fireworks in terms of web graphics...

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...

With GoLive all-but gone, it might seem that Dreamweaver now holds a monopoly over professional page-based web authoring.

However there’s still one company with the resources, vision and resolve necessary to mount a serious challenge to Adobe, and Microsoft is absolutely determined to do just that.

VERDICT Microsoft finally recognizes that professional web authoring needs a standards-compliant tool – just so long as they are Microsoft-approved standards.

Both the Web and Microsoft are central to modern computing but FrontPage, Microsoft’s longstanding web authoring application, is generally viewed with contempt. Microsoft has finally bitten the bullet, killing off FrontPage and replacing it with a complete rewrite: Expression Web.

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?