Via Mark Harrison:
At the PDC, Microsoft have announced Microsoft Expression, a family of professional tools for the design and production of enhanced user experiences and rich content for the Web and Windows Vista platform.The announced products and their code names are Expression code-named:
- Acrylic Graphic Designer … a painting, illustration and effects tool for creating graphic designs;
- Sparkle Interactive Designer … a user-interface design tool for modern application development using the Windows Presentation Foundation
- Quartz Web Designer … a layout and design tool for creating Web sites.
Here is a video about Sparkle: Introducing Sparkle
While I admire Microsoft’s tenacity for broadening their markets, I say leave design to the big boys over at Adobe and Macromedia who are leagues ahead of the game already. I guess I just don’t see how V1 of any product could compete with V10,001 of another.
But, I will try to remain open minded and will check the new products out at some point.