Expression Studio 2 is by no means a fully-fledged alternative to Adobe's Suite of products, but it is a collection of offerings that brings to the table similar functionality while being addressed to the same target audience, namely content developers and designers. The Redmond company is following the same line as it did with the products' rebranding and launch in 2007, bringing to the table updated versions of Expression Web2, Expression Blend 2, Expression Design 2, Expression Media 2 and Expression Encoder 2.

With the release of Expression Studio 2, Microsoft has lived up to its promise of delivering updates to the suite in short release cycles, in this case a year since the introduction of the original product. The Redmond company has focused on bridging the development and design processes via innovations in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) offering a close integration between Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio 2 solutions.

Through the products included under the Expression Studio 2 umbrella, Microsoft is bringing to the table in excess of 100 new features such as Silverlight functionality, support for PHP and Adobe Photoshop import as well as enhanced exporting capabilities.

According to Microsoft, the Expression 2 is a product family. It will be available as early as mid-May, with the full suite going for $699. At the same time, customers will have the opportunity to buy each of the products included in the suite as standalone items. Expression Blend 2 comes with a price tag of $499, Expression Web 2 will set you back $299, Expression Media 2 $199 and Expression Encoder 2 $199.

"The release of Expression Studio 2 flies in formation with the latest platform releases such as Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation and is a very exciting milestone for the industry," commented Eric Zocher, general manager for Expression Studio at Microsoft. "Great user experience is at the heart and soul of our Expression family of tools and is fundamental to enabling developers and designers to collaborate on building and delivering dynamic, connected applications that help customers achieve results."