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Product Information

Expression Studio 4 is Microsoft's suite of design software to create great-looking websites, Silverlight applications, Windows applications, graphics and video. There are a range of products within the Expression suite, including Expression Web for creating standards-based HTML, ASP.NET and PHP websites, Expression Blend 4 to create rich WPF and Silverlight user experiences, Expression Encoder 4 Pro to encode media and Expression Design 4 to create and edit vector graphics.

Expression Studio is available in multiple editions to meet your requirements and budget:

Expression Studio Ultimate: Includes Expression Web 4, Expression Blend 4 with SketchFlow, Expression Encoder 4 Pro and Expression Design 4.

Expression Studio Web Professional: Includes Expression Web 4, Expression Encoder 4 and Expression Design 4.

Expression Studio Premium: Includes Expression Web 4, Expression Blend 4 (without SketchFlow), Expression Encoder 4 and Expression Design 4. This edition is included in an MSDN Premium subscription and is not available for purchase separately.

New Features

New in Expression Blend 4

• Silverlight 4 and WPF 4 support - create Silverlight and WPF applications that target the .NET 4 framework and the new features within it. Upgrade your current projects to version 4 or continue to target Silverlight 3/WPF 3.5. Both Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 use the same project format for maximum interoperability.
• Windows Phone 7 support.
• SketchFlow enhancements - SketchFlow enables designers to easily prototype designs. Now you can share your designs and collect feedback via a SharePoint document library, convert feedback into Team Foundation Server work items, pause and resume animations in the SketchFlow player and more easily add and work with animations (Note: SketchFlow is only available in Expression Studio Ultimate).
• New graphics features - New preset shapes available including arcs, arrows and callouts, new layout-to-path capabilities, new advanced pixel-shader effects, plus you can now preserve layer effects (e.g. drop shadow) when importing Photoshop files.
• New control styles - It's now easier to visually style controls as, even in editing mode, the control templates look just like they will in context. Also Blend 4 includes tooling support for the Silverlight RichTextBox control.
• Visual states - adds easier state editing with WPF 4 controls and the ability to apply pixie-shader effects to state transitions.
• View support - Views and ViewModels help separate UI logic from application data and behaviours.
• Behaviors - New Behaviors for multi-touch, dragging items between list boxes, modifying menu navigation, preserving screen states and more.
• Enhanced data support - now you can add design-time test data from your CLR types and generate test data for your design-time ViewModels.
• New animation capabilities - new easing capabilities for WPF 4 and reduced XAML code generation when creating animations.

New in Expression Web 4

• SEO Checker - This new included tool can analyse your site against best practice SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques to help your site get the highest possible ranking.
• SuperPreview Online - a new Web-based service (in beta) that extends the desktop version of SuperPreview by adding support for additional browsers and operating systems that you can test your website in.
• New extensibility model enables creating add-ins with HTML, JS, and CSS.

New in Expression Design 4

• Import WMF, EMF and EMF+ files - WMF (Windows Metafile), EMF (Enhanced Metafile) and Enhanced Metafile Plus (EMF+) files can now be imported into Expression Design
• Save your workspaces - arrange your workspaces to suit your project and save them for later use

New in Expression Encoder Pro 4

• New workspace views - depending on your tasks you can switch the project workspace between Transcoding Project, Silverlight Project and Live Broadcasting Project for maximum productivity
• DRM (Digital Rights Management) support - encrypt your files using Microsoft PlayReady to protect your content
• Caption support - Import multiple caption files including DFXP, SAMI, SRT, SUB and LRC and export DXFP caption files. All edits you make in Expression Encoder will be reflected in the DXFP files.
• Live Smooth Streaming - available for VC-1 & H.264. Improves the playback of steaming content.
• Enhanced H.264 and VC-1 support - more detailed encoding options available for encoding media (note H.264 options only available in Expression Encoder Pro).

Features

Expression Blend

• SketchFlow - Prototype applications quicker than ever before with support for quickly designing application flows, screen layouts and functionality.
• Codeless interactivity - add animations and transitions using drag and drop behaviours - no coding required
• Sample data - remove the complexities of connecting to real data, just generate data within Expression Blend to test your designs
• Import Photoshop and Illustrator files - Support for importing from Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator ensure a smooth transition of content from traditional workflows
• Code editing - XAML, C# and VB intellisense and syntax highlighting make writing code in Expression Blend so much easier
• Styling - templating functionality makes it easy to rebuild controls into bespoke, reusable controls designed to exactly fit its purpose
• Silverlight and WPF support - support for cross browser, cross platform Silverlight applications and WPF applications on Windows
• Improved UI - Work faster and smarter with the new user interface. Improved gradient creation, application shortcuts, customization of panel layouts, improved animation control, annotations; every element has been improved to help the tool get out of the way of the creative process.
• TFS support - integrates with Team Foundation Server to ensure work is safe and versioned
• Workflow - Improve designer/developer workflow, XAML can be used for designing applications whilst C#/VB can be used to code it. This separation helps with productivity.

Expression Web

• Professional code editor - Intellisense and syntax highlighting support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP make coding and debugging easier. Real time feedback on standards violations help to make corrections to your code.
• Design Surface - Create professional, modern CSS styles with the Expression Web design surface. With support for directly modifying positioning, sizing, margins and padding, you can easily make changes and instantly see the result.
• SuperPreview - View how your website will display in Internet Explorer and Firefox and get instant visual feedback with Snapshot Preview when you make changes to your code.
• Support for Industry Standards - Expression Web supports PHP, HTML/XHTML, XML/XSLT, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET or ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, Flash, Windows Media, and Photoshop as well as integration with Microsoft Visual Studio and Expression Studio. Expression Web also supports Web standards such as HTML, XHTML, Strict/Transitional/Frameset and CSS 1.0, 2.0, or 2.1.
• Create dynamic interactive sites - Add video, audio, animation and more in the form of Silverlight, Flash, Deep Zoom or Windows Media
• FTP, FTPS and SFTP Support - fast transfer of multiple files onto FTP servers as well as support for transferring to multiple locations.
• Import Photoshop files - Support for importing from Adobe Photoshop while retaining layers and format settings.

Expression Design

• File format support - Import from a variety of formats including Photoshop PSD files. Export to PSD, PDF, XAML and more
• Precise edits - Flexible vector manipulation tools, path operators, shape transformations for advanced graphic editing
• Pixel-perfect - place and align your graphic elements precisely with snap-to, grids, points, guides and pixels
• Powerful tools - Bezier, B-Spline and polyline and paintbrush provide intuitive and flexible shape drawing tools. Tablet support lets your draw precisely and with greater freedom
• Effects - apply non-destructive Live Effects to any object or image. Then re-order the effects, toggle them on and off, or change the effect settings for a completely different look and feel
• Expression Studio support - easy export into Expression Web and Design. Target individual slices as separate formats, including Silverlight canvas, WPF canvas, WPF resource dictionary, HTML comp, PSD and PDF. Maximise re-use of your assets. Graphics can be overlaid by multiple and overlapping slices, so you can simultaneously export multiple formats in one simple action
• Build assets - create assets such as buttons or backgrounds that you can use in any authoring tool, such as Expression Web or Visual Studio

Expression Encoder

• Simple, designer-friendly interface make it easy to go from preset Silverlight export settings to changing advanced compression features
• Encode content in the H.264 format using a range of profiles including high, main, baseline and more
• Multichannel Dolby Digital audio support
• A/B compare - preview encoded output with the original to compare quality and choose the right file size
• Metadata support - add a range of tags including ISAN for asset tracking, search and management
• File import support - the source can be from a variety of formats including AVI, QuickTime, MPEG and more
• High performance - support for multiple cores and multiprocessor encoding
• Image adjustments - crop, scale, de-interlace or remove pulldown to deliver the best possible compressed output
• Multi-clip editing - support for multi-clips makes it easy to add idents, adverts, watermarks, credits or remove unwanted sections
• Screen Capture - Capture stills and video with your actions recorded, microphone audio and webcam video can optionally be recorded at the same time
• Live Encoding - steam media directly from webcams/ camcorders and published to Windows Servers running Windows Media Services for delivery. Live productions can be simultaneously archived for future on-demand delivery
• Smooth Steaming - Encode multiple bit rate versions of your media and IIS 7 Smooth Streaming feature will determine the best version to stream based on bandwidth available
• DVD Style Navigation - add chapters and bookmarks to media content, providing end users with choices for navigating through long-form content
• WMV/VC-1 Encoding - features the latest VC-1 encoding capabilities. Generate the cleanest compressed content possible with improved performance and greater control over encoding settings.

System Req.

• Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 3,Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 operating system
• PC with 1 GHz or faster processor
• 1 GB of RAM or more
• 2 GB or more of available hard-disk space
• .NET Framework 4.0
• Silverlight 4.0
• Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 graphics with Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) Driver, 128 MB of graphics RAM or more, Pixel Shader 3.0 in hardware, 32-bits per pixel
• DVD compatible drive
• 1024 x 768 or higher resolution monitor with 24-bit colour
• IE 8/Firefox 3
• Internet functionality requires Internet access (additional fees may apply)
• Actual requirements and product functionality may vary based on your system configuration and operating system