Expression Blend 2 September Preview now live

I haven't really been blogging all the intermediate releases of the Expression products, but today I had to call out the new preview of Blend 2. This version really starts to roll out some of our new features and there are some great ones that I've been excited about. My favorite has to be the new animation capabilities, in particular the vertex animation. But there's plenty in there to keep you playing for hours. A breadcrumb trail for control elements, the split Design/XAML view.

All it all, excellent work from the dev crew! Give it a spin and let us have your feedback!

Silverlight - Webware 100 Finalist already

Very cool to see Silverlight already appearing in the nominations for award polls like these despite it not having shipped yet! Over the course of the next few months, I'll be blogging more and more about the specifics of designing for Silverlight using the Expression tools, in conjunction of course with the release of previews of various Expression products that support it. Just as a reminder at the moment, you can work with Silverlight with Expression Design, the preview of Expression Blend 2 and the preview of Expression Media Encoder. Watch out for refreshes in the months ahead.