Microsoft Expression Web 4 and Design 4 now free

[Jackolantern]

Microsoft is making some huge changes to Expression Studio, which was basically their lower-cost alternative to Adobe Creative Suite. It included Expression Blend (which was somewhat like Illustrator and Flash, but really did not have a comparison in Adobe since its primary usage is creating XAML-based UIs and animations for WPF, Silverlight, Windows 8 and Windows Phone), Expression Web (like Dreamweaver), Expression Design (like a lite version of Photoshop with Flash-like vector editing) and Expression Encoder (for converting videos and other media for streaming over Silverlight).

Now that Expression Studio is no more, Blend is being moved into Visual Studio. Design and Web no longer have a home, and are thus becoming free products! No official support outside of the forums will be given for free downloaders, and no additional versions are planned, but I suggest to grab them while you can. I have used both Web and Design, and can say that for free products, they are both exceptional! Expression Web is particularly standards-focused, in some cases even more so than Dreamweaver. Here is the link, which has links to all the free downloads on the page:

Free Expression downloads!

[OoZI]

You have got to be kidding me... I spent $100 on the package last year... Damn it.

[Jackolantern]

Ouch

That has happened to me several times before, too

[hallsofvallhalla]

interesting news. How is Web?

[Jackolantern]

It is pretty cool. Definitely worth the asking price I personally don't care much for visual web editors, but it definitely comes the closest out of everything else to being a Dreamweaver alternative.

I just went ahead and grabbed both Design and Web since they are free, and no telling how long they will be available.