Wayne Smith

MIX09 starts with a bang

2009-03-18T11:35:00.001-07:00

I strongly encourage you to take a look at the recording of the Scott Guthrie keynote and take a look at the amazing stuff we have in the works. From SuperPreview in Expression Web 3 to Sketchflow and behaviors in Expression Blend 3, we will be delivering some amazing, game changing features later this year. And the Silverlight 3 features that lit up the Twitter feeds are available to use in the Blend 3 Preview announced. Please feel free to grab them today!

The Bob Rivers Show

2009-02-10T21:23:00.001-08:00

Spent the early part of today watching a Seattle institution - and I mean that in the nicest possible way. I was fortunate to have been the backstage pass guest for the show - basically got to sit next to Bob in the studio and watching him and the crew put out the amazing morning show. I was struck by how easy they made it look, but seeing it in action for yourself showed what an amazing team effort it really was. A fascinating glimpse into Seattle life for sure. Thanks to everyone for making me feel at home, to Bob, Spike and Joe, Maura in the newsroom, Mike for arranging the invite and Arik for being host. Check out their all new Website at The Bob Rivers Show

New month, new version, new site, new way to buy!

2008-05-01T14:18:00.001-07:00

So it's all change in the land of Microsoft Expression. We're delighted to announce the availability of version 2 of Expression Studio, that's five new versions of Microsoft's design tools all featuring support for Silverlight.

You can read about all the new features, checkout video snippets and of course, download trial versions from the brand new Expression Website that went live this morning, featuring a new look that matches the recently launched Community Website.

And there's a new way to buy this new version, the Expression Professional Subscription, which offers a range of benefits including operating systems, tools and a license for Parallels Desktop for Mac so designers with Apple hardware can run the tools with ease using either Windows Vista or Windows XP, both of which are included in the subscription.

Congratulations from me to the entire development team on this major release, and to my colleagues responsible for the new Website!

Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor™

2008-03-10T14:11:00.001-07:00

An interesting new add-in for Expression Web is now available to try for free from our friends at WebAssist. Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor takes a huge slab out of the CSS learning curve to provide a collection of very useable and customizable CSS page layouts - all Web standards compliant of course! Eric also talks extensively about this on his site here and here. WebAssist are currently working to make it compliant with the newly announced Expression Web 2.

Microsoft Expression 2 is announced

2008-03-05T13:06:00.002-08:00

In an absolutely jam packed keynote here at MIX08 in Las Vegas in the midst of a raft of announcements, Expression 2 was shown for the first time by my colleague Jon Harris. There's lots to say about it, but more importantly there's bits to try! Your first stop? Why not try the new Website first...Checkout the new PHP support in Expression Web, the new animation features in Blend and of course, the Silverlight features throughout. I was stunned at some of the demos we showed in the keynote - if you didn't get a chance to see it, you can watch it online now - Jon's section starts about an hour into the session. It's so nice to see how integrated Expression is becoming to so many scenarios that Microsoft is now involved with - in this case advertising. This is such an exciting time to be involved with the evolution of Expression.

Microsoft Expression Community Home

2008-02-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

Hello - I've not been around for a while, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to say that we have a brand new Community Web Site for Microsoft Expression. There's already a ton of content and links to our new discussion forums too with product team staff on hand to help. With Mix08 next week in Las Vegas, this marks the start of an exciting couple of weeks. If any of you are going to be there, please come find me and say hello.

Service Pack for Expression Blend

2007-11-27T16:10:00.004-08:00

Although we're obviously working hard on the next version as evidenced by the CTP of Blend 2, we wanted to make clear that we are still committed to our current version, so the team are pleased to release Service Pack 1 for Blend 1.0. A list of issues that are fixed can be found here.

Expression Blend 2 September Preview now live

2007-09-14T11:43:00.001-07:00

I haven't really been blogging all the intermediate releases of the Expression products, but today I had to call out the new preview of Blend 2. This version really starts to roll out some of our new features and there are some great ones that I've been excited about. My favorite has to be the new animation capabilities, in particular the vertex animation. But there's plenty in there to keep you playing for hours. A breadcrumb trail for control elements, the split Design/XAML view.

All it all, excellent work from the dev crew! Give it a spin and let us have your feedback!

Free training for Blend and Design

2007-06-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

There is 12 hours of free video training online at lynda.com at the moment hosted by Lee Brimelow (Blend) and Ted LoCascio (Design). The three courses are Getting Started with Expression Blend, the older but nonetheless still useful original Expression Blend Beta Preview and finally Getting Started with Expression Design. And of course, there's also the free 4 hours of training on the Expression website from Total Training. All in all, a ton of material to get started with the Expression tools - and more to come down the line very soon.

Silverlight - Webware 100 Finalist already

2007-06-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

Very cool to see Silverlight already appearing in the nominations for award polls like these despite it not having shipped yet! Over the course of the next few months, I'll be blogging more and more about the specifics of designing for Silverlight using the Expression tools, in conjunction of course with the release of previews of various Expression products that support it. Just as a reminder at the moment, you can work with Silverlight with Expression Design, the preview of Expression Blend 2 and the preview of Expression Media Encoder. Watch out for refreshes in the months ahead.

I'm back - and here's me at Mix07

2007-05-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hopefully this marks the return to some more regular posting from me! I've been buzzing around doing loads of things including dealing with some of life's inevitable personal issues for ages it seems. One of the many things I've been up to, was taking part in Ray Ozzie's keynote at Mix07 in Las Vegas, specifically during Scott Guthrie's section. I have to say, it's an amazing experience being part of an event like that (not to say an immense privilege) and I only wish more folk could have seen "backstage" because it looked more like Mission Control at NASA let me tell you. Anyway, I think the higher bandwidth versions have been removed now, but if you want to see me demonstrating Expression Studio designing for Silverlight, you can do so here until it disappears forever. Our segment starts at about 40 minutes in. The news at the show, as is very well documented now, is that Expression Studio has shipped. So as I said onstage, many congratulations to everyone who made that happen - the engineering staff of course, but all the myriad of staff who work so hard to actually get boxes on shelves and ensure that support staff are trained and on hand to help. Onwards now to the next versions. I'll be back very soon to comment on what we're working on...

Expression Blend - One step closer

2007-03-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Expression Blend takes another step towards its final availability with the newly released RC (release candidate) build. We've spiced up this version with a brand new set of samples to help you really get started building .NET 3 applications with high quality user interfaces. Please go grab it today.

Frontpage to Expression Web Migration White Paper

2007-03-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

To help people to think about some of the issues involved in migrating web pages from Frontpage to Expression Web, we have just published a white paper which seeks to address and discuss some of the more common scenarios. Whilst not intended to be a full in depth tutorial, it is certainly packed full of useful information! It's now available to download on the Microsoft website.

Would you like to be in the spotlight?

2007-02-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

Well Expression Web has been out in the wild for a little over 2 months now and I'm starting to hear some interesting feedback from users, for which we're always grateful. Feedback really informs the product direction at Microsoft. But I'm also interested in just plain interesting stories of what people are building with our tools and our platforms. If you'd like to see your name in lights in our customer spotlight section, please contact me. No guarantees of course, but we're looking for innovation, great design, problems solved - so I'd love to hear from any of you.

@ExpressionSession07 in New York

2007-01-29T21:21:00.000-08:00

Well a Happy New Year to you all. Yes, I know, I know. I've been busy moving house and of course attending the three Expression launch events in San Francisco, Chicago and now New York - oh and the small matter of Expression Web shipping of course... The venue is stunning, the 52nd floor of 7 World Trade Center - this was the view this afternoon from my podium on the stage. I must remember to pay attention tomorrow and not gaze out of the window.

Interview about Expression Web with Robert Scoble

2006-11-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

Myself and Eric Zocher, the General Manager in charge of Expression development, were recently interviewed by Robert Scoble of PodTech.net about Expression Web and Microsoft's philosophy behind developing tools for designers. If you have a spare 30 odd minutes, you're welcome to listen to what we had to say. Thanks for coming to talk to us Robert!

Microsoft Tech·Ed: Developers - the Virtual side

2006-11-09T02:06:00.000-08:00

I've just been interviewed by Paul Foster about Expression Web. Check out the site for the interview which will appear later on today.

@TechEd in Barcelona

2006-11-08T08:39:00.000-08:00

I'm currently in sunny Spain to speak at TechEd in Barcelona. I've got two sessions here, one on Expression Web and the other on Expression Interactive Designer as a two hander with Peter Koen. We're going to play the part of designer and developer and try and have some fun on the last day of the conference. Be pleased to meet up with anyone while I'm here.

MIX07

2006-11-07T14:38:00.000-08:00

The buzz has started around the next MIX conference already. The dates are now announced and the venue is the same as last year, the extraordinarily large and complex Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Keep checking out the site for the start of registration early in 2007 especially if you want to register at the early bird rate of $995. Hope to see you there!

Aerial imagery inspires industry

2006-10-29T01:13:00.000-08:00

I can't begin to tell how useful I've found the imagery on live.com this last few months. I'm trying to buy a house in Seattle while my wife is in the UK, and to be able to pushpin likely properties and view the birds eye photography has really helped her get a perspective of the neighbourhood. This article on the BBC site provides some interesting insight into the practise.

Get your tips and tricks in print

2006-10-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

Linda Hefferman is busily working away of one of the forthcoming Expression Web titles, Expression Web for Dummies. As you probably know, this series features a tips and tricks section so if you have some things for her to consider for publication please let her know.

Shine in the spotlight

2006-10-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

If you've been evaluating either the CTP or beta release of Expression Web, then perhaps you've already created some great standards compliant web content for your site - or maybe even a complete site? If so, I'd like to hear from you. We're currently looking for some customer spotlights to feature on the Microsoft Expression website, so if you think you've got a great story to tell, then let me know using the email link on the right. We're particularly looking for problems that you've solved, workflows that you've implemented or indeed maybe you've taken the chance to learn some CSS? Whatever it is you've done with Expression Web, I'm keen to hear from you!

Expression Web - Beta 1 now available

2006-09-05T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to announce that today we've taken another step closer to releasing Expression Web (yes that's right, no more designer in the name). We have today released our first beta release for you to download and try free of charge. For those of you that have worked with the CTP release, you will immediately notice that it feels like a solid product that you can use. So please do! We look forward to your continued feedback as we march towards the final release of Microsoft Expression Web.

New Expression Web Designer Training Videos

2006-06-23T05:10:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to say that we've just published a set of training videos on the Expression website. They are a glimpse into a series that is being produced by Total Training and feature well known Web presenter and writer Janine Warner. I hope you enjoy them!

I know, I know, I know

2006-05-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

Not an auspicious start is it? I want everyone to know that we're as frustrated by the ongoing download problems as you all are. And rest assured, everything is being done to identify the cause and rectify it as soon as possible. Let me reassure everyone that the problem is nothing to do with the build itself, nor the EWD engineering team - it simply appears to be a server farm problem that is out of our direct control. Let's hope I can report something more positive tomorrow!