Expression Blend(er)

Had a look this morning at Expression Designer and was very impressed by what MS delivered, both the breadth of functionalities and the way it makes all kinds of XAML stuff accessible. Great tool to create WPF application interfaces, way easier than Xamling things in Xamlpad or Visual Studio. The interface has also a moder look-and-feel which reminds me much of the Cinema4D R10 interface, it seems to be the de facto type of interface for designers (black, flat controls and menu’s, smooth stylish and blinky).

This said, I fear a bit Visual Studio will stay behind, I cannot see how they will combine all this in Orcas. Maybe they definitely choose to split the design and the coding in different tools.

I’m also curious how all this new technology will be balanced by Sun and the competition, how will Java ever be able to compete in this direction?