Today, Microsoft announced the CTP release of Expression Interactive Designer (formerly code named Sparkle) and the fourth CTP release of Expression Graphic Designer (formerly code named Acrylic). Both of these tools along with the Expression Web Designer (formerly code named Cider) make up the Expression Studio family of products. The most important thing for me is that they will support exporting designs to XAML which will then be importable into Visual Studio "Orcas". I hope that will make it a lot easier for me to create applications that don't have the "battleship gray" color coding of the default Windows forms.

I was quoted in two articles about the releases. One article is from ComputerWorld at http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/story/0,10801,108009,00.html and the other one is in eWeek at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1914903,00.asp.

[January 31, 2006]

I missed a news article when I posted this. I was also quoted in the Computer Reseller News article available at http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=CHDSWTZXDDKE0QSNDBOCKH0CJUMEKJVN?articleID=177103281.