Microsoft Expression Blend (sept preview)

What does an UI programmer, a System programmer and a Computer animator have in common? The UI complains "i am not a web designer, those cool flash sites you see, well they are more of a designer job". The System programmers proclaims "i only write engines, those UI coders are no fun anyway". The designers wish list "i wish these jokers understand i cant perform well unless i know the context of how this image will be used in their UI in detail".

Now everyone gets a chance to put themselves into everyones' else shoes.
In MEB, you can animate a control using a timeline....did i say animate...., yes
animate, animate, animate, and TIMELINE, what in the world is happening here? What does a programmer do with an animation timeline? and wait...layering on my toolbox controls? Layering as in Adobe photoshop kinda thing? Dreamweaver??

You bet...the MEB is one heck of an IDE providing all these functionality, wait maybe calling it an IDE is insuficient to provide the right impressin, a mega ide perhaps, a tool that integrates everything that powers an application. (isnt that what an normal ide does? heheh dont try to be smart mouth here...)

MEB is possibly one of the most radical IDE i have the chance of playing with. It infused great power (well not so great responsibility since generated app ran on .net 3.0) and promotes the WPF concept. I must say the first 30 minutes of playing with it caused my mind to ran back and forth thru time and space, to venture the possibility where no man has gone before.
Its one of the most exciting tool :-) for bored programmers.

Having said that, i was working on pHP and java and been using various IDE's (emacs, Nusphere, eclipse, netbeans) before i completed the linux box project. Well, if the linux community was happy with those IDEs they have (there are still some clueless ppl who champion the use of vi or notepad for programming but i am talking about professionals that maximizes a tool like an ide for dev in linux), the MEB would be a real eye opener.

Wait a minute, why are you talking about linux? You are talking about some Microsoft stuff here and that won run on linux, so it has nothing to do with the linux community.
Actually, i have this funny feeling that the borders are coming down fast, heard of mono? The .net being supported in linux also means hordes of windows coders will find their skill and knowledge workable on both worlds with minimum effort. One may argue the other way is true, for eg, java running on windows, well honestly, java apps running on windows not only looked weird but downright silly, they are just anything but cool. Remember there was once that Lotus Notes on the server ran on a command console box (dos like)? Yeah that feeling.

The developers have ensured that whatever u developed on MEB would ran on XP sp2 onward, now that isnt too bad of a criteria seeing that w2k is at least 7 years old now and most Xps could dl the sp2 anytime. U still need the 3.0 .net though.

And as expected, c# is the core language for using this tool. The MEB would launch your VS 2005 when you add the code behind the controls.

Here download it and watch some of the samples provided :
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/download.aspx?key=blend2preview