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Expression® Design 3 Top Features

  • Create Graphics - Create sophisticated vector assets and easily combine these with your Adobe Photoshop assets via the powerful new importer with full layer support, seamlessly transferring your final graphics to Expression Blend or Web.
  • Powerful Tools - Intuitive and flexible shape drawing tools including Bezier, B-Spline, and polyline—with full curve control.
  • Editable Effects - Apply non-destructive Live Effects to any object and change the effect settings for a completely different look and feel.

Microsoft Expression Design 3 Release Notes

This document provides information that supplements the Microsoft Expression Design 3 User Guide.

© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Contents

  1. Uninstalling Expression Design 2
  2. Working with Adobe Photoshop Files in Expression Design
  3. Expression Design 3 setup for East Asian languages
  4. The Input Method Editor (IME) may not work correctly in Expression Design after you install the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 or the .NET Framework 3.5
  5. Adding Adobe Illustrator files to an Expression Design 3 document
  6. XAML export issues
  7. Slice preview issues
  8. Other known Issues

  1. Uninstalling Expression Design 2

    When you uninstall Expression Design 2 after you install Expression Design 3, the strokes folder is removed. This occurs because different versions of Expression Design share the strokes folder. To reinstall the built-in strokes, run the installer with the repair option.

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  2. Working with Adobe Photoshop Files in Expression Design

    Certain visual attributes in Adobe® Photoshop® files can either not be accurately imported, or, after they are imported, lose their ability to be further edited in Expression Design based on the WPF and Silverlight platform features. When importing Adobe Photoshop files into your project, note the following behaviors:

    • To maintain the look and feel of adjustment layers you must merge & flatten related layers in the PSD Import dialog. If you do not merge these layers, Expression Design will ignore them. Design supports rasterizing and importing the following adjustment layers:
      • Brightness / Contrast
      • Black & White
      • Channel Mixer
      • Color Balance
      • Curves
      • Exposure
      • Invert
      • Levels
      • Posterize
      • Photo Filter
      • Threshold

      Expression Design does not support importing the following adjustment layers:

      • Gradient Map
      • Hue / Saturation
      • Selective Color
      • Vibrance
    • Expression Design only supports importing and editing the following Photoshop layer style: DropShadow. The following layer styles are not supported:
      • Bevel And Emboss
      • Color Overlay
      • Gradient Overlay
      • Inner Glow
      • Inner Shadow
      • Pattern Overlay
      • Satin
      • Stroke
      • Outer Glow
    • You may experience unexpected results when you import text from Photoshop. These results can include unsupported character rotation, kerning, and alignment. The text styles that are supported and editable in Expression Design include:
      • FontFamily
      • FontSize
      • Foreground
      • FontBaseLine
      • Text
      • Justification (justify last left and justify all)
      • SuperScript and SubScript
      • Leading
      • Tracking
      • RenderTransform
    • Expression Design does not support importing all other text styles.
    • Expression Design does not support importing text as editable paths.
    • Expression Design does not support importing editable layer masks.
    • Expression Design does not support importing editable gradients. All gradients are rasterized.
    • Expression Design rasterizes pattern fills on import from Photoshop.
    • Expression Design does not support Smart Objects.
    • Expression Design does not support Video layers.
    • Expression Design does not support Dynamic guidelines.
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  3. Expression Design 3 setup for East Asian languages

    Text in Setup dialog boxes does not display correctly when an East Asian version of Expression Design is installed on an operating system that doesn't match the language version of Expression Design.

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  4. The Input Method Editor (IME) may not work correctly in Expression Design after you install the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 or the .NET Framework 3.5

    After you install the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 or the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, the IME may not work correctly in Expression Design. For example, if you select Japanese in the Language bar, and then you type some text, the IME may not work as expected.

    A hotfix is available to resolve this problem. To download this hotfix, visit one of the following Microsoft websites:

    To work around this problem, uninstall the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1. To do this, do one of the following:

    In a Windows Vista-based computer

    1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
    2. Click Programs and Features, and then click View installed updates.
    3. Click Update for Microsoft Windows (KB929300), and then click Uninstall.
    4. Restart the computer.

    In Windows XP or in Windows Server 2003

    1. Click Start, point to Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
    2. In the Add or Remove Programs dialog box, click Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.
    3. If you are using Windows XP, click Remove. If you are using Windows Server 2003, click Change/Remove.
    4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 in this section to uninstall the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1.
    5. Download and reinstall the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package.
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  5. Adding Adobe Illustrator files to an Expression Design 3 document
    • Text is converted to a path on Adobe® Illustrator® import, and each character is treated as a separate path object.
    • You may experience unexpected results when you import text from Illustrator. These results can include unexpected character rotation, kerning, point sizes, and alignment.
    • Subscripts, superscripts, strikethrough, underline, small caps, and all caps text effects copied from Illustrator create separate text objects when pasted into Expression Design.
    • A single text object that has hard returns copied from Illustrator creates separate text objects when pasted into Expression Design.
    • The Illustrator Clipboard export format does not support transparency and blend mode information.
    • PNG images copied from Illustrator into Expression Design are pasted in as multiple image objects.
    • Multiple objects are created when you copy objects that have opacity from Illustrator into Expression Design.
    • When imported from Illustrator, artwork that contains groups is flattened in Expression Design.
    • When an Illustrator file is imported into Expression Design, the Illustrator artboard may be added as an object in the Layers panel.
    • Expression Design vectorizes patterns on import from Illustrator.
    • Illustrator Column Graphs (Charts) are imported as individual objects.
    • Custom strokes are imported from Illustrator as individual paths.
    • Strokes and fills on the same object may be separated when you import the object from Illustrator.
    • Mesh gradients from Illustrator may take a long time to import. Expression Design vectorizes gradient meshes, creating many small shapes that take a long time to render.
    • Expression Design does not support the following Adobe Illustrator blend modes, and maps them onto the Normal blend mode:
      • Overlay
      • HardLight
      • SoftLight
      • Exclusion
      • Hue
      • Saturation
      • Color
      • Luminosity
    • Expression Design does not support Illustrator knockout groups.
    • Expression Design does not support Illustrator softmask images.
    • The colors will not display correctly in Expression Design when objects that use CMYK colors are pasted from Illustrator.
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  6. XAML export issues
    • When you export slices in a XAML container, the XAML slices are embedded in the XAML container file. The individual XAML slices are also exported but these are not needed because the same content exists in the XAML container file.
    • Blend modes are ignored on export. Blend modes are not support by XAML.
    • When text is exported as editable textblocks, text that is attached to a path is not exported.
    • On rectangles that use a basic stroke, the dash property value is ignored.
    • Rounded rectangles are exported as paths.
    • The object registration point is not exported.
    • A rectangle is written out as a path (not as a rectangle) if any transform such as Rotate or Skew is applied in Expression Design.
    • We recommend that you do not use very detailed vector strokes because doing so may produce large XAML files.
    • Objects that use a live effect cannot be copied and pasted in Microsoft Expression Blend™; use Export instead.
    • Copying XAML and pasting it into the Expression Blend XAML code editor may clip some parts of the text. You can remove the Width and Height properties to make sure the text will be sized automatically. Standard copy and paste does not produce this problem.
    • XAML does not support all of the text properties. Some text formatting may be lost in converting the following properties:
      • Leading
      • Tracking
      • Horizontal scale
      • Baseline offset
    • The following additional text properties are not supported in XAML for Silverlight:
      • Font family (except for fonts that Silverlight supports: Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Lucida Grande/Lucida Sans Unicode, Times New Roman, and Trebuchet MS)
      • Alignment
      • Subscript, superscript
    • When specifying the properties for export as well as copy and paste, we recommend that you select the Rasterize all option, for the following reasons:
      • Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) supports Drop shadow, Gaussian blur, and Outer glow bitmap effects, but we do not recommended them for frequent use because they significantly decrease performance.
      • Live effects not supported by WPF will not appear in the exported XAML unless you select this option.
      • Silverlight does not support bitmap effects. If this option is not selected, the effects will not appear in the exported XAML.
    • East Asian text shows up correctly in Expression Design and Expression Blend but, because it is not supported in Silverlight, it appears as blocks in the browser.
    • We do not recommend that you use Image fills for Silverlight because they will not be visible and may cause Expression Blend projects to stop responding.
    • Using a gradient fill on text causes an error in Silverlight. This happens if you use hard returns and tabs in the <run> tag in the exported XAML. Remove the hard returns and tabs between <run> and </run> to fix this problem.
    • The XAML property StrokeThickness will be set to 1 for objects whose stroke width is set to 0 in Expression Design.
    • When used in the same object, a gradient fill and gradient stroke may not align correctly on export.
    • Stroke color on text that is exported as editable TextBlocks is ignored on export. XAML supports only one text color.
    • Live effects are not applied to a warp group when exporting to XAML for Silverlight.
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  7. Slice preview issues
    • Live effects on layers that have been frozen are not shown in a slice preview.
    • The slice preview may not refresh correctly after the Properties panel is undocked. The preview will correct itself by panning or zooming the preview.
    • When the desktop is in 16-bit mode, the slice preview may not render correctly.
    • The slice preview may not center the slice correctly on some notebook graphics cards. Decreasing the hardware acceleration may correct this problem.
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  8. Other known Issues
    • ALT+CLICK to select a gradient stop will not work unless you press and release the CTRL key at least once.
    • Expression Design does not support creating a stroke with a cloned object.
    • When you use the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME), moving the pointer over the Layers palette when you are in text-editing mode cancels the text-editing mode.
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Attributions

Portions copyright© 2007 by Liberty Technology Systems, Inc. Portions of Liberty Technology Systems, Inc.'s software require the following notices:

  • It is based in part on the work of the FreeType Team, and is also derived in part from the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message Digest Algorithm.
  • Copyright© 1988-1997 Sam Leffler
  • Copyright© 1991-1997 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
  • Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that (i) the above copyright notices and this permission notice appear in all copies of the software and related documentation, and (ii) the names of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics may not be used in any advertising or publicity relating to the software without the specific, prior written permission of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Copyright© 1996 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

This W3C software is being provided by the copyright holders under the following license. By obtaining, using and/or copying this specification, you agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and conditions:

  • Permission to use, copy, and distribute this specification and its documentation for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that the full text of this NOTICE appears on ALL copies of the specification and documentation or portions thereof, including modifications, that you make.

Copyright© 1994-1996 SunSoft, Inc.

Rights Reserved

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Copyright© Little CMS

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

JasPer License Version 2.0

Copyright© 1999-2000 Image Power, Inc.

Copyright© 1999-2000 The University of British Columbia

Copyright© 2001-2003 Michael David Adams

All rights reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person (the "User") obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

  • The above copyright notices and this permission notice (including Microsoft copyright notices) shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
  • The name of a copyright holder shall not be used to endorse or promote products derived from the Software without specific prior written permission.
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