Microsoft Kills Expression Suite
expression.microsoft.com
expression.microsoft.com
Blend was the bread and butter of the suite; it was like the "Photoshop" of Adobe's Creative Suite.
Here's the first paragraph of the right-hand column:
Blend will be fully integrated with Visual Studio 2012.
Blend for Visual Studio 2012 provides a rich design-centric
environment for building Windows Store apps and Windows
Phone apps. In addition, WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow
support is available today as a preview and will be released
in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2.
The core of Blend goes into VS, but the vision is going to be traditional WinForms design scenarios from now on out- that's what management is looking for.
Blend was much like Abobe's Catalyst - both products shared a somewhat similar vision, but were also somewhat, evidently, doomed.
The problem I have at the moment is, for doing quick-fire multi-screen, multimedia apps that can take advantage of modern hardware, there's not much left to use. Adobe Flex still seems to be about the best in terms of structure, performance, productivity and reliability.
The only other system I've found vaguely comparable is Ventuz, but this has a fairly high licensing costs, lack of easily available talent and various other complications.
The problem is that Microsoft still doesn't communicate it's big vision to developers at large. There's a lot of dead ends and blind alleys that people get led into...
I'm currently commited 80% timewise to the MS stack, but over the last decade alternatives have matured, and attitudes among the folks with the purse strings have changed towards other tech options in the marketplace. It was another weird quirk of timing that I read this news about Expression while installing various Python packages on a Linux box...
For MS to regain status:
1) Fire Ballmer and get someone that understands technology/design to lead a tech company
2) Be more transparent to devs
3) Put more resources to the core tech that differentiates their OS like Apple does with Objective C API, MS should be doing with WPF (not Silverlight or WinRT or another tech - their thought process of supporting JS didn't really gain much JS devs for Win8/WinRT apps, and just ended up burning bridges with long time MS enterprise devs)
Failing the above I see MS losing more devs and as a result less apps supporting the OS and finally less market share.
To me its not the transparency that's the issue, its the fact that they so many of their ideas are duds.
At the time, Expression was the closest competitor to Adobe Illustrator: it had unique features ('skeletal strokes', based on the co-founders' PhD research), and a superb UI (yes, imagine a streamlined, friendly interface that was different to Adobe's!). The animation version of Expression, LivingCels, offered similarly innovative animation technology, which was seriously being looked upon as a competitor to Flash. More significantly, though, it was on course to disrupt the (cel-based) animation industry. There's an informational site at: http://livingcels.com
That's why Microsoft bought the company.
So, the little things: Creature House bought back the rights to Expression after MetaCreations went down. (I wish they'd do so now, once more!) The wonderfully whimsical website with beautiful, funny illustrations (by Patrick Lee) was replaced fairly rapidly by Microsoft's soulless corporate rendition. There was a Mac version of Expression - abandoned. Then the Windows version was re-coded to fit into WPF (dropping lots of essential features along the way). LivingCels has vanished.
I still use Expression almost daily. It runs perfectly in WINE (especially important now, since the Mac version isn't Intel-compatible). The user manual is a brilliant example of how manuals should be written, and the sample illustrations demonstrate how painterly effects can be achieved through vector gfx.
There's still nothing quite like Creature House Expression, so it's fortunate that Microsoft are still offering these original versions (Windows & Mac) as free downloads (check the links at the end of the Wikipedia article).
In the end, it will always suck to be a developer using Microsoft technology.
Here's the Microsoft bandwagon graveyard:
* 3D Movie Maker * Active Documents * ActiveX * COM * COM+ * Courier Tablet * DAO * dbWeb * DDE * Desktop Gadgets * Encarta * Expression and Expression Suite * Frontpage * HailStorm * LINQ to SQL * Live Labs * Live Search Books, Live Search Academic * Microsoft Bob * Microsoft Equipt * Microsoft Kin * Microsoft Live * Microsoft Live One Care * Microsoft Max * Microsoft Passport * Microsoft Repository * Money * MSN Music * OLE * OneCare * OS/2 * Remote Data Objects(RDO) * Response Point * Silverlight * "Smart" Watches * Soapbox * SQL Server DMO * SQL Server DTS * Tablet PC * VB * VBA replaced by VSA * Vine * Vista * Visual Basic * Visual FoxPro * Visual Interdev * Visual JPlus Plus * Visual Source Safe * Web data access via IDC * Windows DNA * Windows for Tablets * Windows Live Spaces * WinFS * Word Basic * WordHelp (.hlp) * XBox Live Service * Zune
Many of these probably deserved to die. But Microsoft's propensity for suddenly marooning thousands of developers and millions of users at a single stroke is unconscionable.
OS/2? Learn your history, MSFT helped create it, but it was an IBM product.
XBox Live? Last I checked it was still around.
I'm not a particularly MSFT oriented person (apple household) but having been around long enough, you might want to expand your horizons around MSFT product life cycles.
And, I very much disagree with your comment of "It will always suck to be a developer using MSFT technologies" ... Assorted MSFT technologies have made developers a lot of money over the years and I don't see that changing much in the next few years. Yes, they lag at mobile, but they are pretty damn big still.
Actually, MS did once bet on OS/2. It is unfortunate that what was originally the MS OS/2 2.0 SDK turned into an entire fiasco. I really should write a blog series about it. In the meantime, look up "MS OS/2 2.0 SDK" and "Microsoft Munchkins OS/2".
I still miss Galactic Civilizations. One of the better space strategy games.
And meanwhile MS was attacking OS/2 using unethical tactics like "Microsoft Munchkins" that ended up being worse than working with IBM (under the JDA) in the first place.
Anyways, there's been lots of talk of SL dying[1].
Requires Silverlight
I'm confused about your statement, though -- are you saying that that specific MS page requires SL, or that the sites listed require SL?
If it's the former, well, that's expected as it is a MS site, and I qualified my prior statement with regards to such.
If it's the latter, I think it may be a stretch to say that SL is "required"; more than likely, it's used for a specific widget on each of those sites, which probably isn't integral to that site's core functionality.
For instance, I see NBC listed on there, but that seems to only be for the Olympics. I watch The Office on nbc.com, but I can see in the source that it's definitely a Flash player.
"In the end, it will always suck to be a developer using Microsoft technology."
Just like in free software, it depends on what you learn. The Microsoft technologies I use at work are C#, F#, ASP.NET, and IIS. Those aren't going away anytime soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsoft...
* Courier Tablet was never even a product.
* DAO was useful for over a decade and you can still write programs that use it today if you want to. Plenty of people do.
* DDE still works, matter of fact - perusing the list of hot questions on StackOverflow I saw a question about it today.
* Encarta was a developer product?
* Expression/Suite still works and is now available for free! Blend being rolled into Visual Studio? Great!
* Frontpage still works and you can even still buy it new, here you go - http://www.discountmountainsoftware.com/mifrpa.html
* Linq to SQL still works, I just used it in a small project the other day.
* Visual FoxPro made a lot of money for a lot of people and programs built with it still run on Windows 8. I know a company that just paid $50K for a program written in Visual FoxPro. Yeah, I'm sure the original developers hate Microsoft.
* Many of the other products you mentioned were transformed into something else. So, what's the problem? Don't like change?
1. As platform evolves, a system built on a dead product is itself a dead end.
2. Developers skills are also dead ended.
3. All the supporting products (build systems, test systems) are also dead ended.
We seem to reinvent new ways to do old things (forms, validation, saving to database), and this is very wasteful.
Part of the reason why the web has grown up so much is that it has enough time to evolve. I just saw WebStorm and it was amazing. You know what? This is possible because the browser as a platform has enormous incentive to maintain backward compatibility.
It's kind of scary to think you spend learning something in and out only to find out that it's later going to be deprecated entirely. Like Silverlight. Oh well, at least with Silverlight you got something applicable out of it: XAML which works on Windows Phone 8, WPF, etc.
The only glimmer of hope is in the 2013 release I've been told we can build a decent CMS layer on top of Sharepoint.
People always seemed to be put off by the $300 price tag for the package but I felt it was worth every penny for the keyframe animation mode and just to avoid crashing multiple times per day when accidentally opening a complex XAML file in split mode.
I haven't been on the MS side of things in a few months now but I'll have to go play with VS2012.
Edit: Also wanted to add, for those who actually used Design to do Vector graphics -> XAML conversions, there's an Illustrator plugin available to do that:
The horrifying thing was when on a call, they said - "take a look at slides 259 and 260, and you see the difference when I move between those slides???" I could see no such thing - and even if they had done it more obviously(like used a circle or something to point out what had changed) powerpoint is so nasty for showing flows. The forced animations, the transitions :(
It's a good idea in theory, but in practice powerpoint the software is for demos and presentations - not for mockups.
If you bought it using a credit (not debit) card then there's also a shot that you have purchase protection benefits that include price protection and compensation for you if a retailer refuses to accept a returned product.
If your card doesn't have those things -- or ESPECIALLY if you're using a Debit card -- this is a good time to learn that debit cards are awful and you should be adding a good go-to credit card.
Any basic Visa Signature card will be a good start, but I'd suggest finding a Signature card that adds in better price protection. Some that come to mind:
* Fidelity 1.5% cashback Amex offered by FIA (aka Bank of America)
* Chase British Airways card -- includes 100,000 bonus miles, very nearly enough to fly first class from SFO to CDG, a $10,000 fare.
* Just about any American Express card -- unless you travel and want the access to airport lounges, the Blue card is often best. Get the variant that best matches your circumstances.
There are many others, but that's a good start. For pure cashback (a little unsure of the Signature benefits):
* Barclays' Priceline-branded card recently changed their rewards. It's a straight 2% cashback card now which is fantastic. And you get a card with Shatner on it.
* NASA federal credit union has a great 2% cashback card, too. It's changed recently and I'm not totally sure of the details but the last I checked it was 2% after you spent a preset amount each year. You can join by becoming a member of, IIRC, the Stargazers society.
Basic, no-benefits credit cards are silly -- get a good one! It's easy! But debit cards are evil. Friends don't let friends use debit cards.
Also, anecdotally, Capital One doesn't seem to grow as reliably with you as other cards. That is, more people get a $5k citi, chase, amex, etc, that grows to $25k than happens with Capital One. It's not unheard of, but generally the accepted consensus is that Capital One doesn't grow as easily.