• Blogs
• Tradeshows
• Partners
• White Papers
• Events

Edit Review: Microsoft Expression Studio

Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Franklin McMahon

Future-thinking, all-inclusive Web 2.0 deployment package.

A good mantra for Microsoft might be, “Dragging you into the future.” If you have seen any presentation by the company at a tradeshow, you've no doubt witnessed representations of an eager family pressing their touchscreen devices on their tabletops or refrigerators. Microsoft has always had the long-long-term vision. The ironic part is when those types of devices actually do become commonplace, the company will be immersed in something else completely, and it'll be touting that. Microsoft is indeed always ahead of the game, whether we like it or not.

Expression Studio is a future-technology-focused suite of products that includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design, and Expression Media, along with Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition and — via a link to download the beta version of the program — Expression Media Encoder. Some of these products are replacements for previous programs that have been built from the ground up (e.g., Web replaces the discontinued FrontPage). Others represent a collection of technologies that Microsoft most likely acquired by purchasing smaller creative companies (or just their software) during the past few years.

A review of Expression Studio should at least include a mention of Silverlight, the new all-in-one technology that provides a cross-browser interactive web experience, which was introduced at NAB and released last month. Several of the Expression Studio programs are geared toward Silverlight output. Think of Silverlight as a Flash-Shockwave-video-audio-player sort of thing that actually plays fairly well with legacy content and technologies while blazing a new trail. It combines video and image playback as well as interaction. Silverlight stands a real chance of becoming a web browser player standard — and not just because Microsoft is pushing it. Expression Studio is designed to create Silverlight presentations for deployment on the Web. You can create in Studio and output as a Silverlight interactive web experience.

My Expression experience started on a sour note with the installation. It's a confusing mix of HTML-based installers, traditional installers, web links to upgrade to the newest versions, and beta download options (for the encoder). Add the 25-digit serial numbers for individual products (is that a B or an 8?), and I quickly realized how Adobe's one-serial-number, one-click suite-installation procedure has spoiled me. The icing on the frustration cake was the installation of the second disc, Visual Studio 2005, which stopped halfway during the installation and asked for the Visual Studio DVD, which was already in the drive. The only option was to cancel the install. At least the rollback uninstall worked fine. Included in the box are a bunch of Total Training videos that get you up to speed with overviews of all the Expression programs.

It's worth noting the look and feel of the programs in the suite. The interface varies from program to program, but they all have a dark palette, they look excellent, and they are a joy to work in. Smartly designed, these interfaces are scalable for different screen sizes, and even though most of the programs bypass the Microsoft Office feel, they are amazingly intuitive. Expression Studio actually is close to Adobe CS3 in terms of look and feel, but we'll leave that issue to the lawyers.

Expression Web is very similar to the MS Office look and feel the company has used for the past several years. Media is a combination of the Office interface and unique interface characteristics not found in other MS programs. It would seem that with this suite Microsoft is slowly transitioning away from the interface standard it developed for its existing business programs. I would love to see the whole suite go in the direction of the Blend interface, which completely does away with the MS Office feel to create a very hip and easy-to-use interface.

Adobe aims its suites at design people or at video people. Expression Studio is completely all over the map. Programs in the package run the gamut from design to video encoding, and there are tools for developing Visual Studio web programs and for photo cataloging. Not that it's bad to offer such a wide range of tools, but I think Microsoft should fine tune its approach if Expression Studio is to be marketed properly.

Let's look individually at the four Expression products. First, Expression Blend. The easiest parallel is Macromedia Director; using Blend feels like building Shockwave productions. Except, of course, Blend lets you create interactive EXE programs or Silverlight web presentations (XAML). The program has a rich toolset for designing, with elements such as vector drawing, painting, 3D animation, key-frame animation, text effects, video, and audio. Think of it as a compositing program, except that your output is the Web and it's interactive. Not unlike Dreamweaver or Flash, there is a code tab, so all the creative work you are pulling together can be examined in code view (XAML and NET). The concept here is that you design everything as a creative producer and then pass it over to the development team, which refines and deploys using a program such as Visual Studio. It's like designing in Flash CS3, but the final program can be anything from a standalone Windows program to an interactive Silverlight website. For digital content production, you can really narrow the development team down to two people: designer and programmer.

If all of this seems a bit much to get into, don't worry. As powerful as Blend is (and maybe because of its power), you might not use it. Instead, you'll get plenty of use from the other more traditional programs in the suite, such as Expression Media (similar to Adobe Lightroom), Expression Web (similar to FrontPage), Expression Design (similar to Adobe Illustrator), and Expression Media Encoder (similar to Sorenson Squeeze or Apple QuickTime Pro).

Speaking of Expression Web, the program is a very forward-thinking web-design program that incorporates newer technology such as XHTML, CSS 2.1, RSS, XSLT, and ASP. NET 2.0. Unlike Dreamweaver CS3, which has spent years trying to hit the moving target of web-design standards, Expression Web is a true Web 2.0 design tool. It does not forget legacy compatibility, but it's much more focused on current and future standards. As with Dreamweaver, coders and designers will find a lot to like. Expression Web does not offer the design layout chops of NetObjects Fusion or Adobe GoLive, but it has a huge depth of features that will satisfy anyone serious about creating professional, database-driven websites.

Expression Design is as close to Illustratoras you can get without a prescription. It has all the standard tools you would expect in a vector-based illustration tool, including cool options such as Live Effects. These allow you to add blurs, bevels, and embossing — and keep them active and editable no matter how much you alter and change the object. The program also imports and exports a wide variety of file formats, and you can even export to XAML code, which you can then bring right into Expression Blend. Design plays nice with other Microsoft programs (as do the other parts of the suite). For example, you can paste your Design vector illustrations directly into PowerPoint while maintaining all-alpha transparency.

Expression Media is very similar to Lightroom, but its heart is a bit more like Adobe Bridge in that it supports more than 120 different media formats, so chances are you'll use it to keep track of all your footage, pictures, and objects. You can even work offline without even having your originals on your hard drive. Tag, search, explore, categorize, and more — all while disconnected from the Internet. Once you are back online with access to your original assets, you can easily synchronize the organizational changes and apply them to the masters. There are also options for RAW formats as well as backup to DVD or removable storage. Full support for metadata makes searching and organizing a breeze.

One thing Lightroom supports that Expression Media does not is thumbnail exploring while you're looking at one or multiple larger versions of images. You can fudge this somewhat by creating an interactive slideshow that shows multiple slides while you browse a text-based list, but it's not as good. Potentially aiding your team's workflow is a program you can download from the Microsoft Expression website:Expression Media Reader. Media Reader allows you to create a library catalog of your assets and then lets a colleague view it with this reader, even if they do not have Expression Media.

Worth exploring is Expression Media Encoder,to be included in future versions of the Expression Studio and offered in this package as a downloadable, fully functioning preview beta. (You can now also download it separately at www.microsoft.com/expression). The program allows a wide array of import options and lots of presets for video export. Most notable is VC-1 format, a Microsoft-backed codec that's an alternative to H.264/AVC and is playable on HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players. It's also a great format for archiving and creating Silverlight video. Many Silverlight player templates are included with Media Encoder, and VC-1 works great with them. Deploying out of the Media Encoder, you choose a Silverlight player, upload to your server, and then post it on the Web. (Playback requires the free, downloadable 2MB Silverlight browser plug-in viewer.) The encoder allows basic editing for adding bumpers as well as watermarking of logos, A/B comparison, trimming, multipass encoding, chapter markers — and almost every tool a good encoder should have. Tweak the presets, and you can get great results — especially using codecs such as VC-1. It only does WMV and VC-1, but both provide excellent results. Windows Media Video is a main focus, and the relevency of VC-1 is that it's also the standard for HD DVD discs. Bear in mind that the encoder is beta, so anything could change in the future, but for now, those are the supported formats.

The encoder, and in fact all of the other programs in this suite, is available on the Expression website in trial versions, and the Microsoft team is hard at work on upgrades. As I write this, I just spotted an Expression Blend 2 preview available for download.

With a program so diverse and mixed, my final thoughts on purchase will be as well. Expression Design and Expression Media don't yet trump Illustrator and Lightroom, respectively; if you have these already, you are pretty set. Neither program breaks any real new ground. This is actually somewhat of a compliment: Comparison to Adobe's programs at such an early stage in this package's development is high praise indeed.

Expression Web does break new ground. It is a professional, forward-thinking web development program that really challenges Dreamweaver. If you are planning to deploy more of your content via Web 2.0 platforms, and you're not focused mainly on compatibility with older standards, it's a great pick. Expression Blend is really suitable only if you are going to advance into interactive Silverlight deployment. It's a very polished tool for content creation, even allowing 3D animation, but it's meant more for web than for broadcast. As such, the toolset is varied, but it's not too deep. Flash CS3 is a safer bet that will help you make your content more compatible with the present. But if you are an early adopter and want to market yourself as a media artist focused on future technology and cutting-edge client options, such as Silverlight deployment, Blend is a lot like those residential touchscreens we keep hearing about: poised for the future. The good news is the price of Expression Studio. For about $600, you get a lot of power. How much of that power you use, or need, is really up to you.

---

bottomline

Company: Microsoft
www.microsoft.com

Product: Expression Studio

Assets: Smart, intuitive design, works offline.

Caveats: Cumbersome installation.

Demographic: All digital content producers.

PRICE: $599

---

To comment on this article, email the Digital Content Producer staff at feedback@digitalcontentproducer.com.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.