| | |  | Development Utilities | Home » » » » Expression Studio Ult 4.0 Dvd | | | | | | | Description: | | Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Ultimate opens up a new world of creative possibility. Its professional design tools give you the freedom to make your vision real—whether you’re designing for standards-based Web sites, rich desktop experiences, or Silverlight. Includes Expression Blend + SketchFlow, Expression Web, Expression Design and Expression Encoder. Design Tools for Silverlight & .NET Design compelling user interfaces for the Web and desktop using Microsoft Expression, tools purpose built to complement Visual Studio. From Concept to Completion Prototype your ideas rapidly, engage and interact with your customers to get your projects off to a flying start, then save time and energy by reusing assets as you bring your prototypes to life in your production projects. Industry Standard Technologies Create standards-based Web sites with a tool that provides precision layout control, supports a broad range of technologies, and speeds cross-browser debugging with advanced visual diagnostics. | | | Features: | |
• Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Ultimate combines Expression Blend 4 + SketchFlow,
• Expression Web 4 Professional, and Expression Design 4, and Expression Encoder 4 Pro
• Design compelling user interfaces for the web and desktop. Fast, flexible, seamless workflow adapts to you and your team
• Professional tools save time, creating web sites that deliver results; advanced visual diagnostics speed debugging
• Web supports PHP, CSS, HTML/XHTML, XML, XSLT, JavaScript, ASP.NET, ASP-NET AJAX, Silverlight, Windows Media, Adobe Flash, and Adobe Photoshop files
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 5.5 inches | | Product Width:
| 1.0 inches | | Product Height:
| 7.5 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.12 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.5 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.2 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.05 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 2 reviews |
| | | System Requirements: | | | Platform:
| Windows Vista / Windows 7 / Windows XP | | Media:
| DVD-ROM | | Item Quantity:
| 1 |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 2 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Expression Studio Great!Dec 15, 2011
By D. Colasanti
I've been using Microsoft Expression Studio for the past year and upgraded to Expression Studio 4 Ultimate this summer. Expression Studio is the best thing Microsoft has put out in a long time and hardly anyone knows about it. Expression Studio is a package that includes Expression Blend, Expression Web, Expression Design, and Expression Encoder. All of these products are very high quality and help designers (and developers!) do things on Windows that previously would require a much more expensive Adobe package. Expression isn't for everyone, but I really like it, and haven't found any major problems with it at all.
Another reviewer stated that he had problems using Expression when his .Net installation was possibly corrupted - and well, this software uses .Net, so if your .Net installation is corrupted, you really can't blame Expression for not working properly. Mine has worked flawlessly for a long time. Sure, there are some annoyances where it might show too many popup confirmation boxes, but the products work just fine otherwise.
Expression Blend 4 - if you are a Silverlight dev, you need Expression Blend - it's the fastest way to create professional UIs for Windows and Windows Phone. Blend is very powerful and is as good as (or better than) any UI designer on the market today, and if you want to do Flash-like UIs for Silverlight, Blend is the way to go. If you used Microsoft LiquidMotion (Macromedia Flash for Java UIs competitor of 10 years ago) - you'll understand the basic concept, but Blend takes it to a whole new level. While Flash is dying fast, Microsoft plans to support Silverlight through 2024, and with Silverlight 5 out now, I expect Blend 5 to be released in 2012.
Expression Blend's "SketchFlow" product - SketchFlow is a rapid Silverlight desktop-app UI prototyping tool, but I didn't care for it because I didn't find it all that "rapid". You'd have to use it a lot to be productive with it, and I just don't use it that often. It also doesn't translate well to apps/websites, where I'd really prefer to use it. Still, I consider SketchFlow and add-on that I really don't need and wouldn't miss if it was gone.
Expression Web 4 - a great way to create standards-based websites with ASP.NET or PHP. Works with Silverlight and simultaneously with Visual Studio 2010 (you can actually use VS2010 and Web 4 at the same time on the same project). The best Web designer tool I've used in a long time and a must if you also use VS2010. Replaces Microsoft's FrontPage junk - Web 4 is a professional tool that is simple enough for mere mortals to use, but could use more templates, an easier way to create them, and support for publishing to mobile devices. Competes with Adobe Dreamweaver.
Expression Encoder 4 - a tool for encoding and publishing video in Silverlight or by exporting to other video formats for use on the Web (e.g. YouTube). I use this to make videos of my Windows Phone apps and while it's not very intuitve at first, once you figure out what you're doing it works very well.
Expression Design 4 - probably one of the least publicized Microsoft products, although quite good, Expression Design is a vector graphics designer that competes with Adobe Illustrator. Although not as full featured as Illustrator, Expression Design is a professional quality tool at a fraction of the price. If you're familiar with Illustrator but can't afford it, this is a great option as many of the controls work the exact same way as in Illustrator. The only thing it's really lacking is better marketing!
So what's this package missing: A graphics editor (like Adobe PhotoShop), a video editor (like Adobe Premiere), a special effects editor (like Adobe After Effects), an Audio Editor/Mixer (like Adobe Audition), multi-device targeting (like Adobe Device Central), etc., and support for HTML5 instead of just Silverlight. Hopefully these things are coming in Expression Studio 5! But honestly, the only things here that I really miss are the graphics and video editing, where I am stuck with using other tools.
If you already have an Adobe Creative Suite package with Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and either Media Encoder/Flash Video Encoder, and like them, then Expression Studio is not for you. If you need a high-end package that includes many of the things listed above that are missing from Expression Studio, you might want to look to Adobe (nobody else has all of those things either). But if the price-point for Adobe Creative Suite is too high, you only need the capabilities of Blend, Design, Web, and Encoder, or you are just heavy into Silverlight and Visual Studio development too, then the Expression tools will serve you well. I've been quite happy with it.
11 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 It's entirely dependent on dotNET FrameworkJul 08, 2011
By Jacqueline
"sf/f writer"
See below for THE FIX to this problem. Once the fix was discovered, the program works.
----------Original Review with Problem---------
I haven't gotten to use this suite of software yet. The features and capabilities get me all excited, but Expressions Web has lost the ability to display and edit html code. It has the design view and split design and code view, and code view just like Front Page.
I did manage to "import" my Front Page html files, many of which had been written by stripping out Front Page specific code. And at first, Expression Web worked those files just fine. I edited and uploaded a file to test the program and everything worked.
A week later I came back to do some real work, updating links, and Expression Web 4 opened the file in design view, then crashed when I went to code view to work the links. It did that on several of my imported files so I tried it on a new file it made for itself, and it crashed there too. So I tried it on an empty file it made, and it crashed instead of going to code view.
I spent a day on the Microsoft site digging into the Forums, and the best guess among users is that EW4 is "unstable" when the dotNET FRAMEWORK is "corrupted."
So I dug into my computer and found MS had sent 4 updates on June 28, 2011 for the dotNET Framework 4. That is about when the performance changed from great to crash.
Yes, I did all the usual things, "repairing" EW4 from the installation CD (I have Expression Studio 4 Ultimate), trying to "reinstall" from the CD, and then reinstalling dotNET after I went Binging around the Microsoft site to find the "original" files. I found the dotNET files on the Microsoft site, and reinstalled the dotNET 4.
It's still not working (after lots of rebooting too). EW4 will not display html code view for me now.
Maybe Microsoft will send a fix before I can fix it. I do have other things to do. I'll have to work in notepad for a while, though.
I did love FRONTPAGE, I do love the potential of EW4, but potential doesn't get the work done.
Google "Forum FAQ and Guidelines Microsoft Expression Web 4" to find the user discussions, seldom visited by Microsoft employees and get the latest on this issue.
I don't recall the search term that finally led to the download page for the dotNET Framework install files, but I have to find it again and do it all again. Use BING on the Microsoft site, and with some persistence it should turn up.
I'd love to hear from anyone else having this "won't display code view" issue, especially if you've solved it.
---------------End Original Review with Problem-----------
FOUND THE FIX
The first comment written below this review got me started on this problem again.
I went to justanswer.com and tried my luck with computer consultants. One of them found my problem on the first try.
Here's the clue. Microsoft security patches and Windows patches and updates sometimes change the permissions or other operating system settings without your knowing it. At this point, I don't know if it was a .NET Framework patch that messed this up, or if it was an Expression Studio patch, or a Windows patch, but I suspect it was one of their patches that disabled my install of Expression Web part of the Expression Studio 4 package. I can't prove it, though.
HERE'S THE FIX that worked. Dig the program out of the START menu, rightclick, and click "Run as Administrator." Boom, the program works.
I have a Win7 Professional 64 bit operating system, and it's very much like Linux. The server psychology is all over it, with users and permissions and ownership of files and programs. I knew that, but I didn't know that "Run as Administrator" is a higher level of "Permission" than Log On As Administrator.
So I got this program to work. The only nag was that every time I launched the program, I got the dialog that asks if I want to let the program make changes to the computer. That's apparently an artifact of running as administrator.
To change permissions (and you might need a tutorial in permissions before you do this) rightclick the program's entry in the START MENU, and click PROPERTIES, then click on the COMPATIBILITY tab. At the bottom, there's a button that says "Change settings for all users." The next dialog has a checkbox at the bottom, "Run this program as an administrator," so you can set it to always run at the higher level of permission (but you only see that if you are logged on with the correct permissions; this is to protect company computers from desk workers).
Under the SECURITY tab, you can click the Edit button and change permissions in various patterns. By changing permission for EVERYONE, and taking away the checks for "run this program as administrator" I was able to get the nag dialog about making changes to the computer to go away. Don't do this on a company computer!
So for the moment, my problems with this program are solved. I tried a couple others in the Expression Studio 4, and they seem functional.
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