Microsoft Expression Studio Ultimate

Most activities are nowadays performed online, and it’s no longer a complex task to create your own web space. In this regard, Microsoft Expression Studio Ultimate comes with a set of tools with which to create standard-based websites and various types of content, design prototypes for your ideas, and process content to make it suitable for online use.

One first note is that Microsoft Expression Studio Ultimate isn’t really a stand-alone application, but rather a suite of tools dedicated to management and creation of web content and websites. As such, by the end of the setup process you benefit from the features of Expression Blend, Expression Web + SuperPreview, Expression Encoder Pro, and Expression Design.

These tools can be individually used, while most of the project files are supported across the entire working project. Sadly, there’s no main menu to quickly access them.

In order to get an idea of what you want to deliver to the end-user, you need a prototype. This is accomplished in Expression Blend. Multiple projects can be processed at a time. You can work with different types of elements, adjust properties, handle appearance, and more. Projects can be created as Silverlight applications and websites, or WPF applications.

Expression Web is the component for the actual creation and management of the web page, as the name suggests. Little to no programming knowledge is required, especially because of the options to work with snippets. Emphasis is placed on visual creation, but items can thoroughly be managed in terms of appearance, attributes, parameters, and even scripts.

In case you want to include multimedia content in your website, then Expression Encoder Pro helps you load, edit, and process any video file you want to use so that it’s perfectly encoded for online playback. The program includes a timeline editor and provides comprehensive video editing and tweaking capabilities.

Last but not least, Expression Design is where your imagination can run wild. It comes with a variety of creation and editing tools for objects of all types. Thorough editing allows fine-tuning of visuals. In the end, you can spice up your website with neat artworks, drawings, textures, and other visual elements.

To sum it up, Microsoft Expression Studio Ultimate bundles a variety of tools which makes web design fun. Dedicated tools properly handle prototype building, video processing and enhancing for online playback, artwork and graphic designer, as well as web building capabilities with little to no code writing.