Create stuff that's as impressive in execution as it is in the big whiteboard of your mind.


  • Developers get the firepower to create the kinds of visually rich applications online that would have previously sucked the life out of a Web browser and were thereby limited to the desktop.
  • Designers can incorporate processor-heavy motion graphics and high-end video to their hearts’ content—and know that there’s an efficient delivery method (in the form of the Silverlight plug-in) that can handle it.
  • Thanks to the way that XAML dynamically compiles content, developers and designers can now work in tandem, rather than having to take their respective turns as a project comes together.
  • No one has to completely throw out the usual ways of doing things to take advantage of what these new tools have to offer—they’re designed to easily integrate with the products everyone knows and loves.

Intrigued yet?

To sort out why you should bother learning more, click around on this site and hear from people who are using these Next Generation Web tools to push the Web to the next level:

Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on Mac OS or Windows.

ASP.net provides extensive web functionality, which can be implemented using a number of computer languages via the Common Language Runtime. Although ASP.NET could potentially be developed in a simple editor such as Notepad, the real effectiveness of using ASP.NET comes through the use of Visual Studio®.

Visual Studio® is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that provides syntax coloring, IntelliSense, and debugging.

Expression Studio™ contains a number of interconnected creative tools, including:

A design tool used to create modern, standards-based sites which deliver superior quality on the Web.


An illustration and graphic design tool that lets you build compelling elements for both Web and desktop application user interfaces.


The design tool to create engaging, Web-connected, user experiences for Windows.


An asset management tool to visually catalog and organize all your digital assets for effortless retrieval and presentation.


The professional video encoder tool that offers enhancement, encoding, and publishing of rich video experiences.

Windows Live™ Platform gives you a deeper level of control by offering access to core Windows Live services and data through open, easily accessible APIs. Now you can build applications and mashups (Web apps that combine multiple services within a single, easy-to-use interface) that unite your innovation with the power of Windows Live.