Microsoft has released a fix for licensing and activation issues with Expression Web 4. Symptoms of licensing and/or activation issues include:
- Expression Web 4 reverts to trial mode.
- You receive a message that states that the product key is invalid.
- The product key is not accepted during the Expression Web 4 installation process.
- You receive a message that states that Expression Web 4 was already activated with the product key.
If you are seeing symptoms such as this, the fix should resolve your issue. You can find details and a download link here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2635101
To download the fix, click the "View and request hotfix downloads" hyperlink at the beginning of the article.
Please note that this fix is only for Expression Web 4. If you are encountering a licensing or activation issue with another Expression Studio product, you will need to open a support case with Microsoft to get that issue resolved.
If you download the patch and you receive an error that Web_en.msi could not be located, please download the "FullFile" version of the fix and install it on top of your existing installation. This will upgrade your existing installation of Expression Web 4 to SP2a which includes the fix.
From: New Fix for Licensing and Activation Issues with Expression Web 4
A new service pack is now available for Expression Encoder 4, which includes over 300 bug fixes as well as these new features:
General Encoding
Support for Intel QSV GPU encoding (Pro only) – GPU-accelerated encoding has added support for the Intel HD Graphics GPU included in Sandy Bridge processors, in addition to the improved Nvidia CUDA support. You can use both of these devices when encoding for increased speed and performance. More information available here.
Support for 1 and 2-pass VBR for offline H.264 encodes (Pro only) – You can now select 1-pass VBR for MP4 encodes as well as both 1-pass and 2-pass VBR for H.264-based Smooth Streaming encodes.
Support for more AAC audio options (Pro only) – You can now choose multiple-channel audio along with more bitrate and sample rate options when you use the AAC codec.
Support for SRS audio encoding – You can now choose to enable SRS to convert an audio stream from multiple audio channels to two SRS 5.1 surround sound channels.
Live
Manage publishing points from within Expression Encoder (Pro only) – In a Live Broadcasting Project, you can now create, restart or update publishing points on an IIS Smooth Streaming server. You can also choose to automatically update a broadcast’s EventID.
Live crop – You can now crop your live or file sources in a Live Broadcasting project.
Support for VC-1 MBR in a Live broadcast – You can now add multiple bitrate streams to your WM broadcast in a Live Broadcasting Project.
Support for Live H.264 VBR 1-pass (Pro only) – You can now select 1-pass VBR encoding for H.264-based Live Smooth Streaming encodes.
More at the Expression Encoder Team Blog
What's new in Expression Design September 2011 Preview
Expression Design September 2011 Preview includes four new features that further expand and refine your workflow:
- Import EPS files
- Make multiple selection in the Layers palette
- Retain the adjusted position of an object’s registration point.
- Export documents to the SVG format
Import Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) files
Expression Design Preview adds support for importing EPS files. To import EPS files, on the File menu, click Import Encapsulated Postscript File.
Make multiple selections in the Layers palette
Expression Design Preview adds the ability to quickly select a range of layers in the Layers palette, as well as a range of groups and objects, by pressing Shift and clicking in the palette to select a range, or by pressing Ctrl and clicking in the palette to select non-contiguous layers. This feature functions just as multiple selection functions in Windows Explorer.
Retain the adjusted registration point
The registration point is the point where an object is anchored on the document. The registration point becomes visible when you select an object and, by default, it is located at the center of the object, represented by a diamond shape. When you rotate an object, the object rotates around the registration point.
You can change the location of the registration point by dragging it to another location in the object, thereby enabling the object to pivot around that new location. However, previously, if you changed the location of the registration point, rotated the image, and then cancelled the selection, the registration point returned to its default position in the center of the object. Now, in the Design Preview Release, once you change the registration point, perform a rotation, and then cancel the selection, the registration point remains in its new position.
To return the registration point to its default position, select the object and then click the center of the Registration point icon at the bottom left of the application window.
Export SVG
Expression Design Preview adds the ability to export a document in SVG format. Exporting in SVG enables you to integrate vector artwork content into HTML applications that you design using such programs as Expression Blend.
To export in SVG format:
- If you plan on only exporting particular slices or objects, then select the elements that you want to export.
- On the File menu, click Export.
- Under Items to Export, select one of the following options:
- Whole document Select this option to automatically export all the artwork in your Expression Design document as a single SVG document.
- Selected objects Select this option to export only those objects that you selected before you open the Export dialog box. Expression Design exports the objects as a single SVG document.
- Slices Select this option to export slices of your artwork, in multiple output files and formats. Slices are configured before you open the Export dialog box. The preview window changes to display each slice individually so that you can select different export settings for each. You can also use the Slice contents drop-down box to show or hide objects in the slice.
- In the Format menu, choose SVG.
- Adjust the following settings. Depending upon the Items to Export setting you choose, you will see varying options. If you chose to export slices, you must change the Format and other export properties for each slice. Alternatively, you can select multiple slices by holding the Shift key to change the export properties for all the selected slices at the same time. For more information on working with slices, see Expression Design Help.
- Slice name Type a name for each slice in this box. You can only name a single slice at a time, so this option is unavailable if you have selected multiple slices.
- Slice contents If you want to hide or show a particular object in your slices, clear or select the box corresponding to the object that you want to hide or show.
- Always name objects Select this check box to name all objects that are converted from your artwork.
- Place grouped objects in an SVG group Select this option to place any grouped objects in your document into SVG groups that your application design program will recognize.
- Editable TextBlock Select this option to convert text to TextBlock objects that will be editable after you import the document into Expression Blend. Note that you may lose some formatting because SVG does not support all text properties.
- Paths Select this option to convert all text to path objects.
- Rasterize all Select this option to have Expression Design rasterize live effects applied to your document.
- Convert to SVG effects Select this option to convert the Drop Shadow and Gaussian Blur effects to SVG effects. These are the only two effects that SVG supports.
- Location Next to Location, browse to or enter the path for the location where you want the output file to be saved.
- Export All Click Export All to export the file or files. If you are exporting slices and you want to export only some of them, you can select multiple slices in the preview window (hold the Shift key), click the drop-down arrow next to Export All, and then click Export Selected Slice(s). Alternatively, if you want to save any changes that you made to the export properties for individual slices without actually exporting the slices, click the drop-down arrow next to Export All and select Save Settings and Close.
Note: Expression Design September 2011 Preview expires on June 30, 2012.
Download the Expression Design September 2001 Preview now.
For more information, see the Expression Design September 2011 Preview release notes.
Help us improve Expression Design by reporting any technical issues.
From: Expression Design September 2011 Preview | Microsoft® Expression®
Microsoft wants to understand how customers use Windows Phone and wants your feedback, so, they have created the Windows Phone Feature Suggestion Box at the Uservoice web site. You can search for ideas that other customers have posted, vote them up, and post your own comments. You can also submit your own suggestions and feedback. There are 27 categories of features and comments, so you should be able to find something you have an opinion on.
I have already voted up and commented on two suggestions - the ability to sync directly to Outlook on my desktop, and the lack of an SD card expansion slot. These two issues are what prompted me to look at other smartphone options when I switched carriers a couple of months ago, and I ended up with an Android phone.
The Microsoft Expression Web team has set up a forum on UserVoice where users can suggest new features for future versions of Expression Web, and vote on other users’ suggestions. The product team uses this as a key source of ideas and advice on where to take the product.
If you want to provide feedback or report issues with an existing version of Expression Web, you should use the Microsoft Connect site.
On April 8, 2014, security patches and hotfixes for all versions of Windows XP will no longer be available. So bottom line, PC’s running Windows XP will be vulnerable to security threats. Furthermore, many third party software providers are not planning to extend support for their applications running on Windows XP, which translates to even more complexity, security risks, and ultimately, added management costs for your IT department if you’re still managing Windows XP environments. To learn more about Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle policy, please visit Microsoft Support.
The good news is there is a great alternative to Windows XP — Windows 7.
So are you ready to retire Windows XP? Here are 7 things to help you make the move to Windows 7:
- Watch the Is Windows XP Good Enough? Really? roundtable and hear a panel of experts dive into IT Pro questions and common issues around moving off of Windows XP.
- Fire up the Windows 7 ROI calculator and see how much you could save by moving to Windows 7. From reducing help desk cost to cutting down energy consumption to automating common IT tasks, the savings to your business could add up!
- Check out the suite of Windows 7 migration tools available on the Springboard Series that streamline planning, application compatibility, testing and deployment of Windows 7 including the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit, Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT), and Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). See all of these tools in action with this demonstration from the recent Springboard Tour.
- Build your Windows 7 muscles with our Windows 7 Deployment Learning Portal.
- Become a Springboard Series Insider to get monthly tips and tricks on Windows, Office and Internet Explorer.
- Follow us on Twitter @MSSpringboard for the hottest news on IT Pro deployment information.
- Try Windows 7 today. Download the Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial and get started testing your apps and hardware.
Read the rest of Stephen Rose’s blog post at: With only 1000 days left of extended support, don’t you think it’s time to retire Windows XP?
Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 for Expression Web 4. This article describes the fixes and improvements in Service Pack 2. Additionally, this article tells you how you can obtain the service pack.
Microsoft Expression Web 4 Service Pack 2 (SP2) contains significant fixes and improvements in support for jQuery, image thumbnails in the Folder List panel, a new Snippets panel, and in other areas of the program.
Note: Expression Web 4 SP2 cannot be uninstalled separately. To remove Expression Web 4 SP2, you must uninstall Expression Web 4. The uninstall option for SP2 was intentionally not made available in order to avoid interoperability issues that were discovered with patch uninstallation during testing.
Issues that are resolved in this service pack
- Fixed several issues improving product stability.
- Fixed items and visuals in the Insert Symbol dialog.
- The CSS property "overflow: hidden" now behaves correctly on the design surface.
- Improved handling of the HTML "name" attribute.
- Added a notification error in Snapshot panel.
- Fixed online help links in several places.
- Fixed an issue with Copy/Paste in the Folder List panel.
- Fixed an issue in which CSS media queries were removed by the "Reformat HTML" command.
- Fixed several issues that affected the formatting of special characters and symbols.
- Src and link handling now allows protocol-relative URLs.
- Fixed an issue in which deleting a table row or column through the context menu caused unexpected behavior.
- The Hyperlink dialog now properly handles links that are already URL-encoded.
- The CSS property "pre-wrap" now behaves correctly on the design surface.
- Fixed ALT+F1 shortcut for the Folder List panel.
- Fixes to the JavaScript extensibility model.
Improvements provided by this service pack
jQuery support
IntelliSense has been added for jQuery. In addition to the jQuery functions themselves, this provide IntelliSense for ids and classes in your document when creating jQuery selectors. It also includes the ability to continuously chain jQuery function calls and obtain IntelliSense.
New Snippets Panel and improved Snippets behavior.
Snippets now appear in their own panel. This panel provides all the previous functionality of the snippets feature, including keyboard accessibility from Code View with CTRL+ENTER. Snippets previously created by the user will be automatically migrated to the new snippet format and appear in the Snippets panel.
In addition, the Snippets panel provides the following improvements:
- Ability to create folders to categorize your snippets.
- Ability to create wrap snippets—with before and after sections—that you can use to surround text you select in Code view.
- Includes a large number of new sample snippets across several categories.
- Ability to quickly search the Snippets panel to find snippets by name, description, and the code of the snippet itself.
Image Thumbnails in the Folder List Panel
The Folder List now provides an image thumbnail preview in Windows 7 and Vista. This includes information such as file size, width, and height of the image for reference. Quick links, next to the image, CSS, and JavaScript files, copy relevant markup to the clipboard, and paste it into your code.
Interactive Snapshot Panel
The Snapshot panel now provides an Interactive mode for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. This mode allows you to preview dynamic content and code in a browser inside Expression Web. All JavaScript and other interactive content will behave just as if you used the Preview in Browser command.
Universal comment/uncomment
Code view now provides context-sensitive comment and uncomment functionality. The appropriate type of comment will be inserted, depending on the type of code block you currently have selected in your document. Comment/uncomment supports HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript.
Workspaces
Customers can now define and save multiple layouts of their application and panels. Several starter workspace layouts are provided. In addition you can create your own panel layouts and save them to custom workspaces of your choosing.
Custom Toolbars
The popular Custom Toolbars Add-in has been directly built into the application, enabling you to create and name multiple custom toolbars and to add items of your choosing to each of them.
Look and feel improvements to the Code View
Code now uses the popular Consolas font by default. Color and syntax highlighting in Code view have also been improved.
How to Obtain and Install Expression Web 4 SP2
Expression Web 4 SP2 is available from the Microsoft Download Center. To download this service pack from the Microsoft Download Center, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=87d98075-a40b-40b8-86bc-38e7a7606ca4
How to Determine if Expression Web 4 SP2 is Installed
In Expression Web 4, click About Microsoft Expression Web. If Expression Web 4 SP2 is installed, the following version number appears:
Microsoft Expression Web 4 Version 4.0.1303.0
More information at: Description of Expression Web 4 Service Pack 2
July 8, 2011
Dear Windows Mobile 6.x customer:
Microsoft will be discontinuing the My Phone service for Windows Mobile 6.x. Because you may be affected, please review the information below.
My Phone To Be Discontinued
On August 7, 2011 the My Phone service will stop saving content from phones to the My Phone service. If you rely on the My Phone service to back-up the content on your Windows Mobile 6.x phone, you will be affected.
Starting on August 7, 2011, Microsoft will begin moving your My Phone content to Windows Live SkyDrive. SkyDrive is Microsoft's free online storage service that helps you access and share your files such as photos and Microsoft Office documents. Contacts, calendar entries, text messages and photos will be moved to SkyDrive for you. Once moved, you will be able to access this content by logging into SkyDrive using the Windows Live ID that you used to register for the My Phone service.
Other content types, including videos, music, documents and favorites will not be moved from My Phone to SkyDrive for you. If you want this content, you must save it from the My Phone service to your local PC.
On October 6, 2011, the My Phone website at http://www.microsoft.com/myphone will no longer be available. On this date, you will no longer be able to log in to the My Phone service to access your content stored to the My Phone service. Microsoft will continue to store your My Phone content for one (1) year. A copy of your content can be shipped to you on a CD/DVD upon request until October 5, 2012.
Take Action
To learn more about the My Phone service shut-down, including information about your content moving to Windows Live SkyDrive and how to save other content to your local PC, please visit this web site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2557520
Microsoft is committed to making this transition easy. In the meantime, we want to sincerely thank you for your use of Windows Mobile 6.x.
-The Windows Phone Team
Expression Web 4 Service Pack 1 was released today and applies significant fixes and improvements to publishing, SuperPreview, file management, extensibility, and other areas of the programs. To see a list of fixes and improvements, read the Microsoft Expression Web 4 Service Pack 1 Release Notes.
Expression Web 4 SP1 includes improvements developed as a result of customer feedback from Microsoft Connect, such as support for custom Windows colors, improved text selection, and better performance.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 2:00 PM
Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Duration:60 Minutes
Event Overview
Visual Studio 2010 is a powerful IDE that ensures quality code. Visual Studio 2010 is packed with new and enhanced features that simplify the entire development process from design to deployment. Customize your workspace with multiple monitor support. Create rich applications for SharePoint and the Web. Eliminate the dreaded "no repro" problem with IntelliTrace.
In an overview of SharePoint 2010 as a development platform, we will discuss new Visual Studio 2010 features and templates for SharePoint 2010 development, and other related tools such as PowerShell and SharePoint Designer. We will also discuss Expression Studio 4. Come find out more...
Discussion points:
- Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN products
- Team Foundation Server
- Testing Capabilities of Visual Studio
- SharePoint 2010 Development Tools
- SharePoint 2010 Technology Components
- Developing and Deploying SharePoint Applications (demos)
Target Audience:
Developers, Architects, Project Managers, QA and Business Analysts
More, including a registration link, at: Overview of Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Studio 4
New Horizons, ThirdM, and CTDOTNET are proud to host the 1st SharePoint Saturday in Connecticut. This event will be held at New Horizons Learning, 340 West Newbury Road, Bloomfield, CT 06002 on Saturday, January 29, 2011. Doors open for registration at 8 AM and sessions will begin at 9 AM. The event is scheduled to end at 6:30 PM. There are three tracks: Developer, End User, and Administrator.
Register for SharePoint Saturday Hartford today at http://spshartford.eventbrite.com/. If you have any questions about this event please email spshartford@live.com. We look forward to seeing you there.
More at: SharePoint Saturday Hartford
The Expression IQ Team is happy to announce that all of the documentation that’s included with the Expression 4 software (Help > User Guide) is now available on the web. Currently, the content is available in English only, but they will publish translated versions for international audiences within the next few weeks.
You can find the content on MSDN or the Expression Community site.
For this release, they’ve also made SDK documentation available online for the following apps:
- Expression Blend (one SDK for Silverlight, one SDK for WPF)
- Expression Web
- Expression Encoder
From: Expression 4 docs hot off the presses! « Expression IQ
SlapShot is a new extension written for Expression Web 4. For those of you who already use the SnapShot panel (a feature that debuted in Expression Web 3), you will feel right at home with SlapShot.
For those of you who haven’t yet used SnapShot (or who need a quick refresher course), SnapShot is a panel in Expression Web that displays an image of the current page as rendered by the selected browser. It allows you to easily change the browser and browser resolution without having to repeatedly preview in browser to see your changes.
SlapShot is based on the same premise in that you can easily preview a page without loading a browser, however SlapShot extends the features of SnapShot by including full ActiveX support (Silverlight®, Flash®, and so on), as well as interactivity within the page (including navigation).
In the following screenshot, you can see that SnapShot displays only the Install Silverlight message but SlapShot displays (with interaction) the actual Silverlight content.
More at: SlapShot for Expression Web 4 - Expression Web team blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
Microsoft has extended its SuperPreview feature in Expression Web 4 to include an online service. In this article I show you how to use this new feature to review your sites in browsers and operating systems that aren't available on your own Windows-based PC.
More at: Que Publishing: Microsoft Expression Web 4 SuperPreview Online: See Your Website as Others See It > Getting Started with SuperPreview Online
 | On Monday, June 7, 2010, you are invited to join Microsoft for the launch of Microsoft Expression Studio 4, design tools for the Web, the desktop, mobile devices, and Silverlight. The featured guest speaker will be Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft and author of the book, "Sketching User Experiences." They will also show the products in action and showcase design agencies who have seen their businesses grow with Expression Studio. |
The Launch event begins at 11 am and is being held at:
Metropolitan Pavilion
IWNY Headquarters at Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W. 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
To signup, please register at the following site: www.ustechsregister.com/expression4launch
And remember, if you buy Expression Studio 3 now, you will get a free upgrade to Expression Studio 4!
If you are a licensed user of:
- Any Microsoft® Expression product
- Any Adobe Creative Suite product
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or later
you can buy Expression Studio 3 for 40% off ERP and upgrade later to Expression Studio 4 Free! Go to the Microsoft Expression web site for eligibility and pricing info.
Microsoft announced yesterday that beginning in June 2010, they will begin closing their NNTP newsgroups and migrating users to Microsoft forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. Their reasoning is that the move will centralize content, make it easier for contributors to retain their influence, reduce redundancies and make content easier to find. Overall, forums offer a better spam management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by encouraging a healthy discussion space.
Some of the features of the Microsoft Forums are:
Support for Questions and Answers: The forums application enables users to ask questions and get answers flagged as such by authoritative users in the community. This ability to easily filter and find actual answers coming from trusted individuals is what sets the application apart from other discussion-based applications.
Subscription and Notification Services: Users have the ability to subscribe to forum activity they are interested in by subscribing to either RSS or to Live Alerts on any thread they are interested in tracking. Users can also subscribe to RSS feeds for any forum, selecting cuts of data like answer state on incoming or new threads. The Live Alerts option can be configured to send updates to mobile applications, instant messenger or to the users Live Mail account.
Ability to Vote as Helpful: Users can vote on content as being more helpful, enabling users to filter on helpfulness.
Escalations: If enabled in a specific forum, moderators can escalate threads to Microsoft's attention. This enables Microsoft forum owners to filter and be notified of escalations in their community that need a Microsoft response.
Favorite Forums and Online Filtering Users can flag which forums they visit frequently, enabling them to create their own forums home page and get aggregated thread views across multiple forums. Users can also order threads by no replies, see threads containing replies they have not yet seen or apply filters to see questions that need answering. Users also are provided with popular topics in the application on various pages and related threads when coming from search engines to individual threads.
Enhanced Online Discoverability: The goal of our online forums application is to enable users to help each other. One of the best ways to do this is to ensure users can find the help easily. The forums team has invested heavily to ensure the online content is indexed and discoverable to search engines, one of the first places users go to get help. Users also can discover existing topics posted when creating new questions, allowing them to see what may have already been asked and answered by the community.
Administration, Moderation and Answering: Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the Microsoft Online Community is to be self-sufficient. To foster this we have enabled features and tools to help the community moderate itself. These tools enable trusted community leaders to ensure forum content is relevant, on topic and up to date. The Answerer role can be applied to only let users participate in helping to identify confirmed answers. Microsoft Administrators can help keep the community relevant by banning users, bulk deleting spam and helping to organize the forums so they are more discoverable.
Integrated Profile and Recognition System: Users have the ability to find out more about each other by clicking user names in the application. This displays rich information about the users including how many posts, answers and points they have, whether they are MVPs, Microsoft staff or general users and also what other online properties they have recently participated in. Throughout forums, users accumulate points and badges for their valued participation, enabling users to understand more about each other and also incent users to provide more value to the community.
More at: Microsoft Responds to the Evolution of Communities
On April 16, 2010, the release candidate version of Expression Blend 4 was released. Shortly after the release, some users reported that Expression Blend crashes during launch.
If you are one of those people whose Expression Blend crashes after launch, please download this minor revision of the release candidate:
Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate (Updated)
If you aren’t having any problems launching Blend, you do not have to upgrade. There are no new features or changes besides some changes to make sure Expression Blend runs properly on launch.
More at: Expression Blend and Design : Minor Update to The Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate
Ed Hickey has written a great post on his MSDN blog called “How to post effectively in Forums.” It’s about how to get the right answer to the right question. He makes several suggestions on how to frame your question to get the best answer. I would rank Number 3 at the top: “Be descriptive – the more detail you give, the better the chance you have of getting an answer. Include things such as the OS you are using, what version of the product you are using, error messages you might be getting, and exactly what you are trying to do. This is not easy sometimes, as you have all the context of your project in your head 24/7, but we don’t, so help us to help you as much as possible.”
Ed also suggests that “if you know the answer to something you see while waiting for an answer, why not take the ‘next step’ and answer a question yourself?” That’s how I got my start in the newsgroups – I went there looking for answers about Microsoft FrontPage and found that I could answer other people's questions while I was waiting for mine to be answered.
More at: Ed's Getting Started Blog : How to post effectively in Forums
Expression Blend 4 enables you to create websites and applications based on Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4, and desktop applications based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and WPF 4.
Expression Blend provides support for prototyping, interactivity through behaviors, special Silverlight functionality, and on-the-fly sample data generation.
Expression Blend includes new behaviors that are quickly and easily configured. To support the development of line-of-business (LOB) applications, Expression Blend introduces support for Views and ViewModels.
More at: Download details: Expression Blend 4 RC
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