Current and future Microsoft (Expression) Blend Versions

Any Developer working in the XAML Environment must have stumbled across Microsoft Blend, a.k.a. Expression Blend at some time. Blend is a Software aimed to support developers and designers of XAML based UIs create designs and animations, apply behaviors and so forth.



As of 2010 (talking VS Versions), Microsoft has made the licensing of Blend a real mess, if you're a WPF Developer: The only way to purchase Blend is buying the entire Expression Studio Ultimate for somewhere around 500 Euros. Smaller development teams are made to bleed unnecessarily, since the VS 2010 XAML editor had serious issues before SP1.



We're talking 2012 now - seems MS have learned their lesson: Blend is free for Windows 8 Store Apps and comes along with the correlating Visual Studio Express Edition. But what about WPF or the already zombified Silverlight? Good news first: Blend will continue to support WPF. But what are the licensing terms? Looking things up on the Blend Insider Blog, I found the following table:

Platform Go live Blend version
Windows Store apps, HTML Blend for Visual Studio 2012
Windows Store apps, XAML Blend for Visual Studio 2012
Silverlight 4.0 Expression Blend 4
Silverlight 5.0 Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5
WPF 3.5/4.0 Expression Blend 4
WPF 4.5 Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Professional
WPF/Silverlight Prototypes Expression Blend 4

That seems to be the choose-your-destination-and-go-for-it map, but honestly - am I the only one a little confused now?

Well, for me Lori Dirks has made it clear:
Blend is not included in Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop. If you want to develop for the desktop (SL/WPF) you'll need to use the Blend version that is appropriate for the platform you're targeting.
So, I'll stay with Blend 4 for Applications targeting .Net 3.5 and 4.0 and switch to VS 2012 Professional for .Net 4.5. Why so complicated? Why not just one version of Blend serving all purposes? Well, we shall see how Visual Studio 2012 can replace Blend...I'm rather sceptic concerning the animation features, UI State Recording and their like.

Update: Obviously the common call for clarity has had some effect. Here's the new direction:


  • Blend will continue to ship as a standalone tool with Visual Studio 2012, as part of a consolidated designer/developer offering. Blend for Visual Studio 2012 provides a rich design-centric environment for building Windows Store apps and Windows Phone apps. In addition to that, WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow support is available today as a preview and will be released in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2.
  • Expression Studio 4 Ultimate and Expression Studio 4 Web Professional are no longer available for sale. For customers who previously purchased these products, all components within Ultimate and Web Professional will be supported through their support lifecycle.
  • Expression Design 4 and Expression Web 4 are now available for download at no charge. Technical support will not be available for these free versions.
  • Expression Encoder 4 Pro will be available for purchase through 2013. Expression Encoder 4 remains available for download at no charge.

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