Concomitantly with the availability of the third major release of Silverlight, Microsoft also announced the launch of Expression 3, its development and design environment and solutions. Expression Studio 3 brings to the table the following components: Expression Blend 3, SketchFlow, Expression Web 3, Expression Encoder 3, and Expression Design 3. Starting with July 10th, 2009, users are already able to download and test drive a 60-day trail version of Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow in Release Candidate (RC) stage. The remaining products under the Expression Studio 3 umbrella have yet to be made available for download as trial releases.

“Silverlight and Expression fill a clear need in the marketplace for a complete end-to-end solution that makes it easy for development teams to work together effectively, from concept to deployment, to create the types of rich interactive experiences today’s users expect,” explained Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform at Microsoft. “In a record amount of time, we’ve gone from being the industry newcomer to achieving a remarkable rate of industry adoption, rapidly delivering capabilities such as SketchFlow and IIS Smooth Streaming that are unmatched by other vendors. With more than 6 million developers with .NET programming skills worldwide and a platform that delivers a rich user experience at some of the lowest costs possible, Silverlight ubiquity is a matter of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’”

Microsoft informed that all Expression 3 products had been released with support for: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, and Korean. With the availability of version 3 of the Expression Studio, the software giant revealed that it had cut Expression Media from the rest of the pack. Expression Media is from now on a standalone solution that will no longer be a part of the bundle that is Expression Studio.

“The estimated retail prices for the United States in US dollars are as follows: Expression Studio $599 and Expression Web $149. Expression Blend is only available as part of Expression Studio and Expression Design and Expression Encoder are only available as part of Expression Studio or Expression Web. Expression Studio is also available as part of the Expression Professional Subscription for $999. Prices for international markets will vary, and all prices are subject to change,” the Redmond company noted. “Qualifying customers, including owners of several Adobe products, can upgrade to Expression Web 2 for US $79 or Expression Studio for US $349.”

Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow RC is available for download here.