Microsoft announced today the re-branding of Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer (EID) as Microsoft Expression Blend. For months now, EID has been publicly available for test use by WPF designers. Today’s public release of Blend really shows how much the product has evolved since EID was first made available. What once looked like an experiment now looks like a legitimate design tool. The UI now defaults to a clean gray style, something that will be familiar to users of 3D Studio Max or Adobe Premiere. Visually, everything has been touched. New icons have been created for all of the toolbars, new editors have been created for many property types, and the color editor finally lets you enter RGBA or Hexadecimal color values instead of scRGB values!

The changes are more than just skin deep, however. Tasks that previously required editing XAML directly can now be performed using the property panel. This means working with complex controls such as the Infragistics DataPresenter just became a lot easier and a lot more fun.

More Info

• Visit the Infragistics and Blend page to learn how Infragistics is working to ensure a great Blend experience with NetAdvantage for WPF.
• Check Mike Swanson's Blog for the more details on the Expression Suite update and the public CTP of WPF/E
• Microsoft Expression Team Blog