Microsoft Expression Design was
Microsoft's commercial professional illustration
vector and
raster
Raster may refer to:
* Raster graphics, graphical techniques using arrays of pixel values
* Raster graphics editor, a computer program
* Raster scan, the pattern of image readout, transmission, storage, and reconstruction in television and compu ...
graphic design tool for web images based on
Creature House Expression
Creature House Expression was an award-winning vector graphics editor developed by Creature House in Hong Kong, founded by Alex S.C. Hsu and Irene H. H. Lee. It was initially marketed through a developer/publisher agreement with Ray Dream Inc. s ...
, which was acquired by
Microsoft in 2003. It is available free of charge from Microsoft and is component of the discontinued
Microsoft Expression Studio suite. Expression Design is more oriented towards editing
XAML and web graphics rather than print graphics (like
Photoshop and
Illustrator
An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicat ...
) and does not incorporate all of the raster image editing features of the original
Creature House Expression
Creature House Expression was an award-winning vector graphics editor developed by Creature House in Hong Kong, founded by Alex S.C. Hsu and Irene H. H. Lee. It was initially marketed through a developer/publisher agreement with Ray Dream Inc. s ...
.
History
Expression Design was
codenamed ''Acrylic Graphic Designer'' during Microsoft Professional Developer Conference 2005 as part of
Microsoft Expression professional tools for
Windows Vista, and was originally announced as ''Expression Graphic Designer'' until the current name was adopted in December 2006.
The first version of Expression Design was released to manufacturing along with other Expression products on 30 April 2007. The RTM news was announced at Microsoft's
MIX
Mix, mixes or mixing may refer to:
Persons & places
* Mix (surname)
** Tom Mix (1880-1940), American film star
* nickname of Mix Diskerud (born Mikkel, 1990), Norwegian-American soccer player
* Mix camp, an informal settlement in Namibia
* Mix ...
07 conference for web developers and designers. Service Pack 1 for Expression Design was released on October 17, 2007.
Expression Design requires the
.NET Framework 3.0
Microsoft started development on the .NET Framework in the late 1990s originally under the name of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS). By late 2001 the first beta versions of .NET 1.0 were released. The first version of .NET Framework was ...
as it uses
Windows Presentation Foundation. Expression Design is not available as an individual product, but rather only as part of the
Expression Studio suite. Originally Expression Studio was not included in any
MSDN subscription, but in 2007 Microsoft added it to the highest level MSDN Subscription. Version 2 was released in May 2008 as part of Expression Studio 2.
Expression Design is available for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
XP,
Windows Vista,
Windows 7,
Windows 8, and remains compatible with
Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...
and
Windows 10 as of 2019.
A trial version of Expression Design is available. A free copy of Expression Studio 4 (as well as older versions) is available as part of Microsoft's
DreamSpark campaign to eligible students.
Expression Design 4, released as part of
Expression Studio 4 added the ability to import Windows Metafile (WMF), Enhanced Metafile (EMF), and Enhanced Metafile Plus (EMF+) files into your Expression Design project.
As of December, 2012, Microsoft has announced that Expression Studio will no longer be a stand-alone product.
Expression Blend is being integrated into
Visual Studio, while
Expression Web and Expression Design will now be free products. Technical support is available for customers who purchased Web or Design following their published support lifetime guides, while no support will be offered to free downloaders. No new versions of Expression Web or Design are planned.
See also
*
Creature House Expression
Creature House Expression was an award-winning vector graphics editor developed by Creature House in Hong Kong, founded by Alex S.C. Hsu and Irene H. H. Lee. It was initially marketed through a developer/publisher agreement with Ray Dream Inc. s ...
*
Comparison of vector graphics editors
*
Comparison of office suites
References
External links
*
Microsoft Expression team blogat
MSDN Blogs - News, samples, tutorials for the Suite.
Expression Design blogat
MSDN Blogs - focusing on Expression Design.
https://expressiondesign4.com- Fan site helping to maintain its availability.
{{Vector graphics editors
D
Vector graphics editors
Windows-only freeware
2007 software
Discontinued Microsoft software