"This day has finally arrived"

Meng Yan wrote in his post that when Microsoft showed an expression, he said with emotion: "This day has finally arrived ". When he said this, I sat down and felt the same with him.

Expression includes three software: web designer, image designer, and interactive designer, which correspond to three ace products of Adobe: Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Flash. Interactive designer allows developers (designers ?) Easily create interaction applications based on WPF or WPF/E. The major changes mentioned in Meng Yan's post mainly refer to the meaning of this product. Web invention has a history of 16 years. As a display method, it is completely possible and should be replaced by new display methods. Flash, ActiveX, and Ajax are all striving to expand the computing capabilities of the Web Platform. However, the disadvantages of the platform itself limit richer performance and restrict application development. Taking Ajax as an example, we need to take into account both the server-side programs, Communication Models and page scripts, especially the page scripts. I believe that those who have done Ajax applications will understand how troublesome it is to write and debug them. Whether it is WPF or flex, it represents the direction of the rich client in the future-data and performance are separated, provide a good rendering engine and computing capabilities, improve the client user experience and ease of development.

In fact, Meng yan also said another sentence at the scene. I asked him his opinion on expression suite. He said, "tactical success and strategic failure-who will be willing to apply windows ......" Tactically, the release of expression suite poses a great threat to three important Adobe products. Why? The first reason is that the expression suite is well integrated into the integrated development environment (Visual Studio). Developers and designers work in a set of solutions with clear division of labor and responsibilities. During web application development, incompatibility between design and development has always been a problem. For the pages designed by the artist, programmers are required to perform control decomposition and reorganization. In this process, unexpected changes are often generated to the original expected page effects. Expression allows designers and developers to work in the same environment, and even works in pairs (not in Pair Programming). It manages the presentation layer of the presentation layer and logic management logic, and can be combined seamlessly.

Interactive designer is the software that best embodies this idea. Page effects such as switching and animation can be completely controlled by the designer (view), and the developer is responsible for the logic part (Controller and model ). For example, if there is a button on the page, click it and perform a series of calculations on the server side. An integer is returned, which determines the Rotation Angle of a sphere. What do we need in the past? In ASP. NET applications, implementation methods are cumbersome. Using interactive designer, the designer draws the button and sphere, uses the timeline and key frame tools to define the sphere rotation animation, and uses the Attribute Editor to bind the sphere rotation animation to the button event. At the same time, developers open the same page file, double-click this button, and use C # In vs. Net to compile the server program, and return the appropriate integer. For web designer, visual CSS design and Web Standard Support all surpass Dreamweaver.

What's terrible about expression suite is that it will bring about huge changes in the development process of Web applications (and rich client applications. The premise for separating interfaces from logic is that they can be seamlessly integrated. expression provides a means to seamlessly integrate interface development and logic development-at least in ASP. net and WPF-based rich client applications.

According to the current release of the preview version, the expression suite has a high degree of completion and is basically qualified for release. From Adobe to Microsoft, many engineers have revealed the suite's ambitions for Adobe. A large number of Windows-based applications (limited by Vista, and currently only ASP. NET Applications) development projects should soon use expression to replace Adobe products.

If you are interested, you can visit http://www.microsoft.com/expression#more information and download the current version. You can also download the firstlook reader from this address to the New York Times. This reader is based on WPF and is believed to bring new reading experience to online media.