Microsoft Expression Blend 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 the Model-View-ViewModel pattern.
In Expression Blend, you design your application visually, drawing shapes, paths, and controls on the artboard, and then modifying their appearance and behavior. You can import images, video, and sound. In Windows-based applications, you can also import and change 3D objects.

Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Top Features
1. Silverlight & .NET - Fully leverage the underlying platforms, Silverlight for cross browser, cross platform deployment and WPF for the ultimate Windows client experience.
2. Utilize your design assets - Extensive and flexible capabilities allow you to import Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files, ensuring a smooth transition of visual design assets from traditional workflows.
3. Behaviors - Bring a project to life by adding interactivity, animation and transitions using Behaviors, powerful building blocks of interactivity, without writing code.

Microsoft Expression Blend Top 10 Features:
1. SketchFlow revolutionizes the speed and efficiency you can prototype a vision for an application
2. Enable interactivity without writing code
3. Accelerate the creation of effective UI with sample data
4. Utilize your design assets - Import Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files
5. Code editing with Intellisense
6. Styling and Customization
7. Support for Silverlight and WPF
8. Improved User Interface
9. Integrate with Team Foundation Server
10. Desktop and Rich Internet Application Workflow

You can create storyboards that animate the visual or audio elements of your design, and optionally trigger those storyboards when users interact with your application. When you work on Windows-based or Silverlight-based applications, you can redesign the templates that are applied to basic controls so that your application looks and behaves uniquely.
When you work on your application, you can update your project at any time with code-behind files or custom control files that programmers are working on. When you use Expression Blend, designers and programmers can work on the same project at the same time without getting in each others way.

Graphics requirements:
In Windows XP
1. Click Display in Control Panel.
2. Click the Settings tab and then under Color quality, make sure Highest (32 bit) is selected.
3. Next, click the Advanced button, and then on the Adapter tab, click the Properties button.
4. Click the Driver tab and look next to the Driver Date to see if the date is more recent than 11/1/2004. If it is not, then video and hardware acceleration will not work properly on your system unless you upgrade your video drivers.

In Windows Vista and Windows 7:
1. Under Appearance and Personalization in Control Panel, click Adjust screen resolution.
2. Under Colors, make sure Highest (32 bit) is selected.
3. Next, click the Advanced Settings button, and then on the Adapter tab, click the Properties button.
4. Click the Driver tab and look next to the Driver Date to see if the date is more recent than 11/1/2004. If it is not, then video and hardware acceleration will not work properly on your system unless you upgrade your video drivers.

Microsoft Expression Blend Features:
1. You build an application by drawing shapes, drawing controls such as buttons and list boxes, making the pieces of your application respond to mouse clicks and other user input, and styling everything to look uniquely your own
2. You can also insert images, audio and video clips, and custom controls from SDK libraries or third parties. What you see on the design surface in Expression Blend is what your users will see when they run your application.
3. With SketchFlow, a new feature set in Expression Blend, you can create prototypes that are functioning applications instead of a series of static images that must be clicked through to get a sense of your final application.
4. In Expression Blend, you work on real pieces of a working application, but you can still draw and style everything as easily as you can in other illustration software. When you want to draw something that represents an interactive control, you can actually select and draw a functioning control (such as a button or a list box) and then style it.
5. Behind the scenes, the functionality of your application is provided by two powerful technologies: Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). With Expression Blend, you can create websites and applications based on Silverlight 3, and desktop applications based on WPF 3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1).
6. A full suite of vector drawing tools, which includes text and three-dimensional (3D) tools.
7. SketchFlow, a new feature set for creating prototypes that are real WPF or Silverlight applications.
8. An easy-to-use, modern visual interface with dockable panels and on-object shortcut menus.
9. Real-time animation.
10. 3D and media support for enhancing user experiences.
11. Advanced, flexible, and reusable customization and skinning options for a variety of common controls.
12. Powerful integration points for data sources and external resources.
13. Real-time design and markup views.
14. Artwork import capabilities from Expression Design.
15. Site import capabilities from Expression Encoder.
16. Interoperability with Visual Studio 2008 to help designers and developers work together more closely and efficiently as a team.

SoftSea Editor's Note: 30 days trial, to test the Beta bersion of Expression Blend you need to register for a trial key here.

The license of this software is Free Trial Software, the price is $499.00, you can free download and get a free trial.