Expression Blend 4 vs Adobe Firefox CS5

Expression Blend 4 is better than Adobe Firefox CS5

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We all know how all graphics design tools are memory pigs that including Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks and others. I can assume the why! All these products are done in C/C++ and still use old legacy code and coding techniques. I do not believe that Adobe ever redid its tools from scratch in .NET, C# and WPF. That means, they still may be using unmanaged code (C++) and so much memory leaks that could be avoided using .NET and CLR.

I can tell you the reason, why?

I am redesigning new Mindcracker and I use both, Adobe Fireworks CS4/CS5 and Expression Blend 4. In this blog, I am not going to talk about how great Expression Blend 4 is, from a developer point of view but just to give you an example of, how efficient Expression Blend is.

I am designing same pages in Express Blend 4 and Adobe Fireworks CS5. In Fireworks CS5, once I have 3 or 4 pages opened, I start getting "Not Enough Memory" errors and Fireworks freezes. I have a very powerful Sony Viao VPCS111FM, 4GB RAM, i5 Processor, and 500 GB HDD. This is not an average laptop. I guess to use Fireworks, I need probably 8GB RAM.

While doing same pages in Blend, I never get these kinds of problems. Also, Blend is more responsive than Fireworks.

I guess Microsoft Blend team is on right path as long as they keep making the improvement to the product and Adobe will be going down unless they redo their products using new technologies.

Expression Blend 4 is more than just a design tool.  See Expression Blend Can Do for You

Mindcracker
Founded in 2003, Mindcracker is the authority in custom software development and innovation. We put best practices into action. We deliver solutions based on consumer and industry analysis.