Availability
Expression Blend was code-named Sparkle, and originally the product was announced as Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer, before it was renamed Expression Blend in December 2006.
On January 24, 2007, Microsoft released the first public Community Technology Preview of Expression Blend as a free download on their web site. The final version was released to manufacturing along with other Expression products on 30 April 2007. The RTM news was announced at Microsoft's MIX 07 conference for web developers and designers. Expression Blend Service Pack 1 was released in November 2007. Expression Blend requires .NET Framework 3.0. Expression Blend and Expression Web are also available as part of the MSDN Premium subscription.
Expression Blend 2.0 supports developing Microsoft Silverlight browser-based Rich Internet Applications providing animation, vector graphics, interactivity and video playback capabilities. Version 2.0 supported only Silverlight 1.0 applications at release and Microsoft had planned Blend 2.5 for Silverlight 2.0 applications, however the capabilities of the preview version 2.5 have been added to Blend 2.0 Service Pack 1.
Expression Blend 3 was released on July 22, 2009, with the whole Microsoft Expression Studio suite at version 3. New features include support for PSD and AI files, SketchFlow, TFS support and number of other significant improvements. Sketchflow is a user experience prototyping module implemented in Blend.
Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate released April 26, 2010. Adds support for Silverlight 4 and WPF 4 while also remaining compatible with Silverlight 3 and WPF 3.5 SP1 applications. Other improvements and additions: shapes library, improved Photoshop file support, added pixel shader effects, path layout, transition effects, ListBox item transitions, Model-View-ViewModel pattern support, additional Behaviors, conditional Behaviors, sample data from CLR classes, design time resource resolution, easing functions for WPF 4, cleaner XAML, and .ZIP support for projects and templates.
Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone, Preview 2, released May, 2010. Adds support for Windows Phone 7 projects to Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate. Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone will be free.
Expression Blend 4 released June 7, 2010 as part of Expression Studio 4.
Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview was released along with Windows 8 Developer Preview on September 15, 2011.
Expression Blend for Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 was released on August 15, 2012 alongside the Windows 8 & Visual Studio 2012 RTMs. The Expression Blend Preview (which allows this new version of Blend to work with Sketchflow, Silverlight & WPF) was also released on this date.
Read more about this topic: Microsoft Expression Blend
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