Microsoft Expression – First Impressions
Having just installed the Microsoft Expression Suite, Expression Design (ala Photoshop/Fireworks), Expression Web (please don’t be Frontpage 2007! Oh god please!) and Expression Blend (a design driven Windows UI development environment). My initial thoughts:
After installing the required dotnet framework 3.0, the installation process for all three applications was painless. Expression Web’s installer is more polished that that of the others but that is to be expected as, of the three, it is the only finished release (Design and Blend both being CTP’s). I was slightly perplexed at being given the choice of “Regular”, “Custom” and “Complete” installs as the custom install gave no configuration options just the option of installing the whole product. I would imagine that when Design and Blend reach there 1.0 releases that they will share the same slick install process that Web currently sports and installation configuration will no doubt be possible.
The fist time you start any of the applications you are prompted for a serial key and led through the required product activation. Once the activation is completed you are met by a rather different User Experience than you might have expected from a Microsoft application.
I have to say while I like the dark UI, which I presume is designed to fit better with the overall Vista look and feel than that of XP, I did find it a little hard to read on my laptop’s WSXGA+ display. The dark theme is very cool but perhaps could benefit from slightly higher contrast white on dark as opposed to grey on dark.
Overall, a very sexy looking application suite though and I’ll be very interested to see how they perform.
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According to the Microsofties the reason the UI is dark is so that the toolbars fall into the background and the ‘design space’ comes to the foreground (which is apparently better for focussing in on the actual design). A fair enough concept, but I’d hope that in future versions the skin can be tweaked to suit the preferences of the operator.
There is a setting within Expression Blend and Design’s preferences panels to change the theme of the UI although it currently only allows either the standard “Dark” or reversed “Light” themes.
In terms of their intention of making the design space the focus, this is certainly the case in Expression Blend where the default background is dark and you can specify custom colours, in Expression Design however, this feature seems to have been over-looked and the page is still somewhat lost in the glaring white of the design space. It will be interesting to see where the UI ends up in the final release of the suite early next year.
I notice also that the only application at full release, Expression Web, doesn’t share the dark UI theme. It almost feels like Expression Web has been developed separatly from the suite, posssibly even aquired from a third party or was simply further into the development cycle when the decision was made to use the new UI. It looks and feels more like VS2005.