Newsletter: April 2008

Welcome to the Expression newsletter!

Hope you had the chance to attend MIX08—some incredible announcements were made including Silverlight 2, DeepZoom, the upcoming launch of Expression 2, the availability of Expression 2 Betas. All MIX08 sessions can be viewed on demand. Stay tuned for the release of Expression 2 Trials soon!

Also included in the MIX08 announcements was the brand new Expression Professional Subscription which will become available June 1. Customers are encouraged to purchase Expression in Volume Licensing with Software Assurance prior to June 1 in order to take advantage of some great cost savings when automatically upgraded to the new Expression Professional Subscription for free at its release.

Also in March was the exciting Phizzpop Design Challenge finale at South by Southwest. After winning the regional competition in Los Angeles, Cynergy competed with the top firms from New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Austin. The challenge was to create a solution spanning multiple platforms including mobile and the web that facilitates social, political, and academic dialogue. Cynergy utilized Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Live Services, Microsoft Expression Studio, along with other technologies to create their solution named “Ben” after Benjamin Franklin.

Next event stop for Expression is the Web 2.0 Expo April 22-25 and HOW Design conference May 18-21. Be sure to drop by to say hi!

The Expression Team

Feature Story

Introducing PHP Support in Expression Web 2, by Nishant Kothary & Tyler Simpson

PHP is one of the most popular server-side scripting languages on the Internet today. It is cross-platform, runs on most popular web servers, and it’s free. Expression Web 2 includes a powerful set of features for PHP developers. In this article, we will provide a brief summary of the PHP features available in Expression Web 2 to get you up and running..
Read more

Web Factory

Creating lean or luscious CSS-based layouts, by Anna Ulrich

CSS-based layouts are the presentation standard for web pages, but the learning curve can be steep. Instead of starting your layouts from scratch, try the new preset CSS layouts provided in Expression Web 2. Read more

Silverlight

Media Technologies in Silverlight: Windows Media and VC-1, by Ben Waggoner

In this article, Ben Waggoner discusses the video and audio technologies in Silverlight 2, giving background on their design and tips for best practices with them. Read more

Design

From ClickOnce to Deep Zoom – an Interview with Tony Sokolowski

Tony Sokolowski discusses how building compelling user experiences has changed over the last year and a half, starting with Family.Show and finishing this year at MIX08 with Memorabilia.hardrock.com. Read more

Interview with Eric Meyer, by Joseph Lowery

Of all the current trends in user interface design, the most interesting, most beneficial and most difficult is simplicity. If designers are going to successfully embrace simplicity, then we have to understand where this trend comes from and the principles behind simplifying our designs.
Read more

Links

	Expression Professional Subscription On June 1st, the new Expression Professional Subscription will be available.
	MiX 08 Watch the best of MIX 08 with the UX track sessions: available online on visitmix.com.
	Microsoft Expression Community We just launched the Microsoft Expression Community site for inspiration, creativity & sharing -- a great way to start with Expression!
	Expression Studio beta 2 Expression Studio beta 2 is now available for download.