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
Microsoft Expression Web 3 Service Pack 2 (SP2) contains general improvements to the application and in SuperPreview.
Issues resolved in this service pack
- When editing PHP, files you may have been asked to update related hyperlinks on the page. If you did so, some PHP tags may have been removed. PHP tags are no longer removed when you update related hyperlinks.
- When you renamed a PDF file from the Folder List, the PDF file became corrupted and could not be opened. PDF files now save normally.
- Expression Web 3 would crash if the list-style-image property was used in a CSS file. Using the list-style-image property in a CSS file no longer causes Expression Web to crash.
- SuperPreview sometimes crashed while launching because of a problem that occurred when locating Firefox on your computer. SuperPreview no longer crashes while locating Firefox.
Improvements provided by this service pack
SuperPreview now supports Firefox 3.6. If Firefox 3.6 is installed on your computer, then it should be available in SuperPreview.
How to obtain and install Expression Web 3 SP2
Expression Web 3 SP2 is available on the Microsoft Download Center.
More at:
Description of Expression Web 3 SP2
Justin Harrison, Program Manager on the Expression Web Team, has posted a step-by-step tutorial on how to use an Access 2007 database in a site in Expression Web 3. He also promises that this will be much easier in the upcoming Expression Web 4 (not yet released), and that as announced at the MIX 2010 Conference, if you have purchased Expression Web 3, you will get Expression Web 4 for free! (See here for details).
More at: Expression Web team blog : Using an Access 2007 database with ASP.NET 3.5 and Expression Web 3
Just received this email from The My Phone Team:
We’ve just updated the My Phone backup service to provide fixes and enhancements based on your feedback. The next time you sync, you will receive a notification on your phone to update the My Phone software. The content you have already synced will remain unchanged and can be managed online.
Have you logged into the My Phone website lately? Sure My Phone provides peace of mind with automatic backup, as well as find and protect your lost phone features. But here are a few tips and features that you may not know about:
1) Quickly update and manage your contacts conveniently from your PC. You can even add photos to your contacts from your desktop with just a few clicks of your mouse. Just login to the My Phone website, go to Contacts, and select the contacts that you wish to update.
2) Easily download, upload and share your photos. Getting pictures on and off your phone can sometimes be a tricky task, but My Phone makes it simple. Not only can you download Photos from your phone to your PC, but you can also upload photos from your PC to your phone, as well as quickly share photos from your phone or PC with Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. When you login to My Phone, your most recent Photos are right there on the home page. Select the photos that you wish to upload, download or share.
3) Use Wi-Fi to sync your content. My Phone will sync over Wi-Fi when available. If your phone can connect to the Wi-Fi in your home or office, then you won’t have to worry about cellular data usage.
The My Phone team is excited about the continued success of our service. We were recently chosen as a finalist for the GSMA 2010 Best Mobile Internet Service and continue to see new users across the globe every day.
Thank you for using My Phone. We hope you continue to enjoy our service.
The update improves the experience for Windows Mobile touch screen devices as well as lengthens the legacy support for phones as early as the original Blackjack running Windows Mobile 5. To update your phone go to
http://gettag.mobi page on your mobile browser. You will then be prompted to update your current version of Tag.
More at: Microsoft Tag : Microsoft Tag Reader update now available for Windows Mobile
From: Stopping Development for Windows Mobile « blog.pavlov.net
“We have been building a version of Firefox for Windows Mobile for quite a while, with the expectation that Microsoft would be doubling down in the mobile market and hoping that they would put out a great new mobile operating system. We’ve been following the Windows Phone 7 announcements quite closely for the last few weeks, and had one of our developers in attendance at MIX last week. We know that the underlying platform for Windows Phone 7 is Windows CE 6, which is a big step up from the kernel used by Windows Mobile 6.5. Windows CE 6 is a platform that we have been developing towards, and already run well on, leaving us well positioned to have an awesome browser on Windows Phone 7.
While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications. Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold.”
Expression Web MVP and WordPress hacker Morten Rand-Hendriksen is doing a 1 hour live webcast with Microsoft Canada demonstrating advanced WordPress customization with Expression Web 3 on April 6th, 2010, and you are welcome to join. It will be an extended version of his MIX10 session with more demos and more time for questions. All you have to do to participate is register. Full writeup below:
REGISTER
Invitation Code: 0781DA
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Start Time: 11:00AM PST (02:00 PM EST)
Webcast Duration: 60 min
Questions about these events?
Call us at 1-888-789-7770
A follow up to Paul Laberge’s “101” webcast, Expression Web MVP and WordPress hacker Morten Rand-Hendriksen takes you through an intimate and enlightening look into his day-to-day work process. He specializes in building solid standards-based websites on the WordPress platform using Microsoft web technologies and Expression Web. The session takes you through real-life examples of customer projects and pulls back the curtain on a work process that employs what Morten jokingly refers to as the “Unholy Quatern” – Microsoft’s Expression Web 3, Web Platform Installer and Mesh combined with the open-source publishing platform WordPress. Combining these four technologies Morten has developed a process in which rapid site debugging, prototyping and implementation becomes a reality.
Learn the inner workings of WordPress and how to use its theme engine to build pretty much any website you can think of using Expression Web 3 and see how using simple web technologies like WPI and Mesh can make your life as a CMS dev/igner much easier.
Register Today!
From: Webcast: An Intimate and Enlightening View into Microsoft Expression Web 3 | Design is Philosophy - The Pink & Yellow Media Blog
Earlier today MicrosoftFeed reported that Microsoft unveiled the Expression Blend 4 Beta, and now you can download it from here. Expression Blend 4 Beta enables you to create Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 applications for the web, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and WPF 4 applications for the desktop.
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 the Model-View-ViewModel pattern. Expression Blend 4 Beta also adds support for Silverlight 4, .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010.
More at: Download Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Beta | MicrosoftFeed
Sprint has a new partnership with GetJar, the world’s second largest app store.
GetJar’s catalog of more than 60,000 free applications now are available to all Sprint customers with feature phones such as the LG Rumor, Samsung Reclaim and the Sanyo 2700.
Sprint customers with RIM BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices also have access to the GetJar library of applications.
- Len Barlik, vice president of wireless and wireline services for Sprint says "We are opening up the world of apps to customers who may not have a smartphone. Our partnership with GetJar means that all Sprint customers will now have access to thousands of applications ranging from popular apps such as YouTube and Google Maps to more niche applications that address their business needs."
Here’s how to use GetJar on a Sprint Windows Mobile phone:
- Open the SprintWeb home page http://vision.sprintpcs.com
- At the top click on “Categories”
- Click on Downloads
- GetJar will either be a listed option or clicking on Downloads will take you directly to GetJar
Or you can go to http://m.sprint.getjar.com
According to the site there are 808 apps for my Palm Treo Pro!
More at: Mobile Applications: Sprint and GetJar bring thousands of apps to more mobile phones
From the Palm Support web site: “When the year changed to 2010, this affected the Messaging application's ability to correctly display date stamps on SMS and MMS messages. Messages from 2010 display a date stamp of 2016. The Treo Pro Date Stamp Update fixes the date stamp issue. With this update, SMS messages events now appear with the correct date stamp. It will also correct the date of any SMS messages you have already sent or received that display the wrong year.”
I have applied this fix - It did fix most of the existing messages, but a thread I have going with my daughter is still out of order. I'll have to wait until I get another text message from her or someone else before I can say that this really works.
More at: Palm Support : Treo Pro Sprint - Treo Pro Date Stamp Update for Sprint
A new version of the official Facebook app for Windows phones has been released on OpnMarket. This latest version 1.1.0.14 brings the ability to Like/dislike, comment, view comments, notifications and search functionality to Windows phones running Windows Mobile OS.
What’s new in Facebook 1.1 for Windows phones:
- Hopefully some bugfixes and improved speed
- Improved notifications system
- "View Comments"
- "Comment"
- "Like" (or "Dislike")
- “Search” (for new contacts or existing ones)
This app is currently not available on Windows Marketplace for Mobile. You will have to download and install it from OpnMarket – a freeware alternative to Windows Marketplace. Simply point your phone to http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/opnmarket via the built-in web browser to install OpnMarket. Facebook 1.1 can then be installed from this free marketplace for apps.
More at: Download Facebook 1.1.0.14 for Windows Mobile | Redmond Pie
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