Expression, Silverlight?

[Ronald S. Cook]

I'm a Visual Studio developer confused by seeing these new products coming
out... Expression and Silverlight.

Is Expression maybe a successor to FrontPage and is Silverlight maybe
something to compete with Flash?

Are Visual Studio, Expression, and Silverlight expected to exists together
(and in some sort of harmony) in a development shop, or is something else
going on.

I've read the FAQs but I'm still confused.

Thanks for any clarification,
Ron

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

Expression comes in 4 flavors :
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

Silverlight is a bit more encompassing than Flash :
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/why-compelling.aspx

Read up on them, because explaining the differences would take too much time.

 

[Ronald S. Cook]

Is there any link that explains the differences between the three platforms
and how Microsoft suggests we use each in our shops?

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Expression Web is the replacement for the FrontPage. It has a sister product
called SharePoint Designer that is essentially the same as EW, but has
additional functionality geared towards working with SharePoint.

The Expression products are focused on creating compelling interfaces using
tools such as Blend for XAML interfaces, and EW for web interfaces. EW works
very nicely with Visual Studio and makes adjusting and tweaking the visual
style of a web page faster. The two problems I've run into is it doesn't
pickup a change in the file while EW has it open (in other words, edit a
file that is open in EW and EW won't notify you that the file has changed so
when you save it you over-write any changes made in another app like VS).
The other problem I've notices is a bug with the <br> element. It creates
closing <br> elements like so </br>, which is incorrect and can't create the
self-closing XHTML-compliant <br />.

You can think of Silverlight as a JavaScript enhanced design viewer that
will let you create XAML designed interfaces for the web. Basically,
enabling you to do with a web-page what you'll be able to do with Visual
Studio "Orcas" (next version of VS).

You may want to take a look over at www.visitmix.com. The sessions are now
available from that conference in video which may help explain what's going
on.

 

[Kevin Spencer]

They are not platforms. Visual Studio and Expression Studio are development
toolsets. Visual Studio is chiefly targeted at programmers, while Expression
is chiefly targeted at UI designers, but they overlap somewhat, just as
development and UI design overlap somewhat. Silverlight is a technology for
creating media that can be used in browsers, similar to Flash, but with more
features than Flash (at the moment).

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP

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