What I love about Expression Studio (yes I am an Expression GEEK)

By Don Burnett

 

Someone asked me the other day why I am so jazzed about Expression Studio and why my own focus has went away from using products like Adobe's Creative Suite.. Well, it's not that I don't like Adobe products, but I think the collaboration/integration effect of Expression Studio's products has won me over for UI development and here's why..

Expression Design

Everyone in the world remembers Fractal Design Painter which became Creature House’s Expression 3 late in the game. It was the first program that was vector based to do everything people wanted with bitmaps and in my humble opinion it competed very well with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for people doing vector based design. Expression Design still does that extremely well today. Somewhere along the path to Expression Design 1.0 it seemed to lose its identity because of the interface makeover to be in-line with other Expression products, but when I ask people out in the field, if they remember Fractal Design Painter, all of the sudden customer acceptance goes up 1000 % with designers. I think Microsoft should make that lineage of the product more “known” to customers. Because at first glance, customers don’t think much of the product. When they find out it goes back to Painter and all the cool texturing and natural drawing things that it can do, then folks get really excited very fast. Those I have taken that point with really embrace and like the product and do things with it. The old product had a really “steadfast” community around it. It would be nice to get some of these folks back talking about it.

Check out this review (it’s glowing) http://www.unleash.com/kurt/expression3/index.asp ... The highlight of that review is the sentence “In a nutshell, Expression 3, like its predecessors, is a natural media vector-based drawing tool. Unlike most paint programs that use bitmap images, Expression uses vector graphics to create effects that seem impossible using programs like Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand.”  I believe that is very true even today with Expression Design. I have high hopes that Microsoft will be promoting that fact in marketing..

Expression Media

Yet another product bought into the fold. Formerly I-View Media Pro.. One of my first jobs was with a company called Media Station. We did Disney’s Animated Storybook series for Windows and Mac (Lion King, Pocahontas, Winnie the Pooh), and others for Universal, Mattel and others. I worked for both the art and engineering departments and one of my duties was asset cataloging, version control, and making sure the right graphics and animation made it onto the CDs… I so wanted a program back then like I-View Media Pro, because back then we did this with terabyte hard drives and the old version of MS-Access. There was no XML or programs that would do this. I believe this is a really great program, and whether you are a professional developer, a pro photographer, or just someone who has a collection of media, this program is very “right sized”.  Mac folks love this because they have been already familiar with and using I-View for years.. It fills in between iPhoto and upper range products like Light Room and Aperture. But not just on the Mac, there is nothing else like this on Windows..

Expression Web

I have been a Macromedia Dreamweaver user for years, since 1.0. I got tired of paying for updates (or having my company do it) which really didn’t add extra features and just re-scrambled the interface into something that didn’t work better than the previous version and fixed bugs. My development experience has been that I gravitated towards the benefits of ASP.NET and Dreamweaver only partially supports ASP.NET functionality (not fully 2.0 or later compliant). Plus there was a lot of very “legacy” stuff in Dreamweaver that I had to get around to support the latest standards based web functionality.

Expression Web is a great product, mainly because it’s standards based and supports today’s standard web pages and the rendering is beautiful on IE and supports Firefox and Safari wonderfully. The only thing I kind of miss is the user driven EXTENSIONS architecture that Dreamweaver, but it seems like that might be changing with 2.0 and above.. Having a completely standards based program means extensions aren’t as necessary anyway.   I think this product really lives up to its advertising.. I reworked my portfolio site completely using it. I have had people compliment me on it. It’s a dynamic site with full JavaScript and XML support. If I add a new project to my portfolio, all I have to do is make a new entry to an XML configuration file and insert the metadata in for the project description and point at the paths for the screenshots. Expression Web made that all easy, and the CSS functionality is great..

Expression Blend

The product team doing this powerhouse really pays attention to what people are doing with it and I love it. The interface makes things incredibly easy and the  product just rocks. I would love to see Microsoft market the “extensibility factor” and adding custom controls with this and do some partner marketing with folks like Identity Mine who are doing custom control add-on's for Blend. Visual Studio built a huge “custom controls” vendor market around its product. This is very possible with Blend and something I’d like to see more happening with this. It’s looks like we are at the beginnings of this, I'd like to see more from the Visual Studio 3rd party control vendors.

Expression Encoder

Another great tool, it does just what we need. I don’t want it see it change..  I would love to see more people do live stuff with it, and I am looking forward to seeing case studies about how it was used with MSNBC for the Olympic games..

Expression Studio is no longer a new product, and I am seeing people get really excited about it and doing some really cool things with it. A lot of the situation is just getting people using it and liking it, I believe adoption is spreading significantly.  I think it’s a powerhouse set of products that in many ways do things better than Adobe’s CS3 and have many specific features that Adobe doesn’t and it can really enhance designer and developer workflow.

That's my take on things...

Technorati tags: Collaboration, Integration, Adobe, Microsoft, Expression Studio

Yahoo Messenger Vista- Quick Notes

by Don Burnett

If you are installing Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista and getting the message that ACTIVE MOVIE can't find component or can't find "ad2mpegin.dll" and also telling you that reinstalling the application might solve the problem, well it won't..  I got really frustrated by this, and hadn't been recommending people install this application. Until I realized Yahoo! was not the problem, Adobe was!

Here's the answer to the problem.. It seems you might get this message if you have an older version of Adobe Premiere Elements installed on your machine. If this is the case the answer is to simply copy the  ad2mpegin.dll and ad2mcmpgdec.dll files from your Adobe Premiere Elements folder over to the Yahoo Messenger for Vista Folder (if you are on Vista x64 beware of the Program Files and Program Files (x86) pathing). Then your problem will be solved and Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista will perform properly..

I figured out this fix by researching what installs ad2mpegin.dll and it's Adobe Premiere Elements. Yahoo! Messenger isn't the only program that has a problem with this.. Adobe mentions this on their site, though I doubt the Yahoo! team knows about this yet, considering Messenger for Vista is still in testing.. This is another reason I am highly considering removing my purchased copy of Premiere Elements from my machine. I rarely use it anyway, and it's been a constant source of problems with compatibility with other software. Somehow considering who makes this, I am not surprised  by this development at all

Technorati tags: Yahoo Messenger for Vista, Bug, Adobe Premiere Elements

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Flash Video and H.264

We consumers are seeing some really cool things from competition between Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash. Today the Flash plug-in gets a major upgrade to join Silverlight in supporting HD video over the web. The exciting thing is the plug-in will also support playing other video formats including QuickTime. H.264 is supported by major video companies and is great for video and streaming over the web. Apple also is a big supporter of H.264. This really wasn't a surprise that Flash would add this kind of support; I expected this when Adobe Media Player was announced and it supported such multi-formats.

So where does this leave the competition with Silverlight you might ask? I would consider them dead even for web video, but really the 1.1 Silverlight release still shines ahead because of the .NET runtime that has been refactored into it. The one edge it has is the CLR (Common Language Runtime) which is almost a platform itself. The only way I'd consider that Flash has capabilities, beyond Silverlight, would be if Adobe and Sun were to get together and offer a plug-in that integrated Flash with a Java virtual machine.

Someone said to me today, "Now that Flash has high definition video, no one will even bother with Silverlight, because it has nothing people want, it's just a “want-to-be". My first thought was well," Wrong I don't see it that way. You are completely missing the point of having .NET in the runtime".

The CLR (.NET runtime) gives you things like extensibility and core features you expect from an operating system that arguably aren't present in Flash or Action Script at the moment. It's also language agnostic unlike Java. In a world where the operating system is quickly becoming the network and what framework you are running to provide your users with a set of services are make or break, you will start to see the difference in complexity of applications very soon.
It's possible with a combination of Silverlight and GOA WinForms to move entire windows applications (including enterprise applications) to the platform agnostic Silverlight (yes it runs on Mac and PC and soon Linux). Some of you might remind me that GOA also makes a Flash version, but it's not quite the same because of the CLR/.NET runtime. If you use another RIA platform you don't get that same rich set of APIs and functions that almost make it an operating system out of it.

In my opinion Silverlight's .NET runtime almost qualifies itself as a platform agnostic OS. Because of this, if you are in Flash or Flash with AIR your applications begin to look thin, or you have to resort to browser integrated applications to get the functionality. Both are designed not for the same purposes, so it's like comparing apples to oranges with their individual design sensibilities.

The CLR in Silverlight means things run faster (not like JavaScript based web browser applications), and they are ultimately easier to make SECURE. No one has talked about security in RIA's (Rich Internet Applications) yet that much. But believe me when they become common place, who will be better poised to be secure and offer more OS services type of support.
Don't get me wrong, I am glad Adobe brought Flash video into HD and the world of H.264, we all benefit from that, plus the ability to play other movie formats right from that one plug in. With a 98% of the browsers in the world having Flash installed, this will be a major upgrade in capability for most everyone. But why did they add this now? Why did it take Adobe so long, they have obviously been working on this for some time? Why try to cover playing so many video file formats (beyond H.264)? It's obvious that Silverlight is gaining momentum on Adobe Flash. But the reason isn't probably video, though Adobe needed to do this to stay in the game.
Does the new Flash version make everything that is in Silverlight's core functionality obsolete or negate people doing work in Silverlight? I don't believe so, not at all! I believe because of Silverlight 1.1's CLR we'll see a whole new class of capable Rich Internet Applications that compete successfully with Java and gives the web a framework that's really its own OS. That's something Flash on its own still isn't competing with.

I would tell developers and designers to just remember that Silverlight with the .NET CLR (common language runtime) is not just a platform for cool video and animated graphics, the core services it provides really bridges the gap from calling it just a plug-in, to making it full web platform, one that is language and web browser agnostic for development and platform as well, that we are just starting to see the benefits. Now a Windows platform developer can take his full windows application and implement most if not all functionality in Silverlight and have it run just about anywhere. It is a platform that doesn't care if you are on a Windows or Mac box or what browser you are running.
So, Adobe Flash got better, but is it good enough? I would question how rich an API and how functional you can make an Flash or AIR application, versus Silverlight with the .NET Runtime. I think our next battle the industry will see in the world of RIA's and which platform has the best most complete API's and set of functionality. Sure RIA's are new and not that functional yet, but would you rather go with a full featured framework to build your applications that people already build current platform applications daily? Or one that doesn't let you go as deep as you needed or something that is new and barely scratches the surface. I love the CLR and the extensibility and the fact that it's a real "web platform" not just a framework that just gets you as far as taking you out of the browser.

In this sense I think it will be a battle between Java and Silverlight, not Adobe Flash and Silverlight. If you just even look at the functionality, you should think about what can do with a Java application today versus a Flash application. You will see there is a decent amount of disparity of functionality for core services, just like the situation when comparing Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.

I was hoping today (instead of just adding HD video) that the Flash runtime was to be totally reworked from top to bottom, improving the runtime, making Action Script just one of the possible languages. I'd like to see the runtime reworked to support multiple languages, a better set of core framework functionality that goes way beyond Action Script. I hope the competition continues because we users are heavily benefiting.

Someone asked me today if I thought Flash with HD Video, would trump Silverlight or stop the defections to Silverlight? Until Adobe gets a framework refactored into with all the services of .Net, or partners with Sun/Java to make Flash and Java one big plug-in, the defections will continue.

Who will win the RIA battle? I can't really honestly guess at this stage.. I think the winner will be whoever gets RIA development to the stages where they are just as capable as an enterprise platform application with all the same available services. Whoever gets there first will no doubt win all the marbles. Right now, I believe personally, Silverlight has the win here because of the .NET runtime (CLR). The heart and soul of Windows development now works everywhere. The way I see it, Silverlight is more a competitor to Java than it is Flash, because it's almost an entirely self contained platform. Its original purpose (still in definition) isn't just cool graphics and video on a web browser. Silverlight is much deeper. I think it's Microsoft's recognition that the OS is no longer on the PC but inside the network and web browser. It's a framework that runs on many platforms and gives you services everywhere.

These of course are just opinions and how I see things. Tell me what you think. Have you worked with both? Am I off the mark? Or missing points?

Technorati tags: Adobe, core OS services, Dot NET, Flash, Flash plug-in, H.264, HD Video for Web, RIA, Rich Internet Application, Silverlight