Eric Rudder at the
PDC introduced
Microsoft Expression, a family of professional tools for the design and production of enhanced user experiences and rich content for the Web and
Windows Vista platform. Expression code-named "Acrylic Graphic Designer," a painting, illustration and effects tool for creating graphic designs; Expression code-named "
Sparkle Interactive Designer," a user-interface design tool for modern application development using the
Windows Presentation Foundation; and Expression code-named "Quartz Web Designer," a layout and design tool for creating Web sites.
"Acrylic Graphic Designer" Key Features and Benefits
| • |
Dynamic visual effects. Designers can explore their creativity with innovative styles and graphic properties such as textures, fringes and dimensionality. New image effects such as blurs, drop shadows, color correction and filters can be accomplished by using nondestructive, editable Live Effects. "Acrylic Graphic Designer" also includes advanced features such as PhotoMontage. |
| • |
Flexible hybrid graphics environment. Built-in flexibility enables designers to alternate between vector-based and pixel-based elements within a hybrid graphics environment. |
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Easy hand-over from design to development. Users can easily incorporate graphics into a variety of other software tools and industry formats, including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio and XAML. |
"Sparkle Interactive Designer" Key Benefits and Features
| • |
Rich visual design environment. The design environment of "Sparkle Interactive Designer" enables the combination of multiple media elements such as vectors, pixel images, 3-D content, video, high-quality text, and animation for rich, cinematic user interfaces. Content can be contextualized by applying custom styles and layout to assist end-user interaction and comprehension. |
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Custom styles and adaptive layout. With the inclusion of adaptive layout for various screen resolutions and form factors, customers can combine visual styles into compelling new interface elements. |
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Easy hand-over from design to development. XAML enables the translation of the graphic user interface into the code environment, fostering seamless collaboration between developers and designers. Prototype, design and development stages within the software development process are optimized through the sharing of a common platform and integration with Visual Studio. |
"Quartz Web Designer" Key Benefits and Features
| • |
Advanced Web site design. "Quartz Web Designer" enables the direct manipulation of positioning, sizing and padding with CSS page layouts. The flexible, designer-focused work space provides easy access to task panes, toolbars and features. In addition, the rich design-time experience combined with integrated design and code views helps to deliver differentiated Web sites. |
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Standards-based design. Web designers can create accessible, standards-based Web sites by default and configure flexible schema settings to support all combinations of HTML, XHTML and CSS standards as well as browser schemas. Built-in compatibility and accessibility checkers ensure that Web sites render properly in any browser. |
| • |
Support for XML, ASP.NET and XHTML offers easy integration between Web design and development teams with "Quartz Web Designer" and Visual Studio.
Now, what we're doing here with Project LINQ is that we are taking the concepts of query, step operations, and transformation, and we're making them first class in the .NET platform and in the .NET programming languages. Rich query that you could previously only write in SQL or in XQuery, you can now write in C# or VB, going against any kind of data source, be it objects, relational or XML. ANDERS HEJLSBERG at the PDC .
LINQ isn't just about querying in-memory data, it is also about querying relational and XML data. In fact, as part of LINQ, we're introducing a new API called (DLINQ ?) that gives you Language Integrated Query for relational data and allows you to map tables and databases onto classes and objects in C# and VB.
The LINQ Project is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. It extends C# and Visual Basic with native language syntax for queries and provides class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities. |
LINQ on Channel9
Watch this Channel9 video with Anders Hejlsberg and Luca Bolognese as they explain what The LINQ Project is, and how it will help you create XML and data-driven applications.
C# LINQ Tech Preview
The LINQ Technical Preview includes samples, whitepapers, hands-on labs and compiler support to create LINQ-enabled applications using release candidate versions of Visual Studio 2005 or Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. Note: this preview works only with the Visual Studio 2005 Release Candidate.
Visual Basic LINQ Tech Preview
The LINQ Technical Preview includes samples, whitepapers, hands-on labs and compiler support to create LINQ-enabled applications using release candidate versions of Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition. Note: this preview works only with the Visual Studio 2005 Release Candidate.
LINQ Project Overview document
Read about the goals of, and the features proposed for The LINQ Project.
101 Samples using LINQ
See The LINQ Project in action in these code samples. samples are in C# only for now.
LINQ Bloggers - Read about the latest developments in The LINQ Project on the blogs.
Downloading the VB 9.0 preview bits...
Creating Custom Aggregate Functions in LINQ
More LINQ news items
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