Expression Studio 4.0 was launched at Internet Week in NYC on June 7th. If you have already purchased Expression Studio 3.0 or Expression Web 3.0 you are entitled to a FREE upgrade.
How does the free upgrade work?
The Expression Web 4 free upgrade is only available for users who have purchased the retail version of Expression Web 3 (e.g., from DigitalRiver, from the Microsoft Store, a retail box copy, etc.). In that case, you can download and install the trial of the version 4 product and the version 4 setup should handle the licensing for you, as it should retrieve the license from the Windows license store.
If you have any other version (e.g., a volume license copy, MSDN, DreamSpark, etc.), the free upgrade is NOT available. You will either need to either buy a copy of version 4 or will need to acquire version 4 through your original source as it becomes available there. It is already posted at MSDN.
How to tell which version I have
If you need to check whether your copy of Expression Web 3 is eligible for the free upgrade, choose Help > About Microsoft Expression Web and look at the product ID number. It should be form of a 5-digit number, a dash, a 3-digit number, a dash, etc. If that 3-digit number is 617, you are eligible for the free upgrade. Otherwise, you are not.
Once you have installed and activated upgrade version, you can check to see that is is a fully licensed version by again selecting Help > About Microsoft Expression Web. You should see about the Product Code “This is a fully licensed copy.”
Licensing
Expression Web 4 can be licensed and activated on, at the most, two systems, e.g., a laptop and a desktop. If you need to reinstall on one of those systems, e.g., because you reinstalled Windows, you should be able to reinstall Expression Web 4 and reactivate at that time.
Reinstalling Expression Web 4
If you took advantage of the free upgrade from version 3 to version 4, save your copy of version 3! If you need to reinstall version 4, after you have reformatted your computer, for example, you will need to first install and license version 3, then install version 4. If you have not reformatted your computer but just need to reinstall version 4, you should not have any problem, as the version 3 license will still be in the Windows license store even if you had previously uninstalled version 3.
What’s new in Expression Web
- The Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview online service is a beta service that extends the capability of SuperPreview to include support for additional browsers and operating systems.
- The SEO Checker feature of Expression Web analyzes your site against the best practices for getting the highest possible search-engine rankings for your site.
Release Notes
Download Expression Web 4.0 Trial
Watch for upcoming tutorials and more information on this new release.
Each time I install a new version of Expression Web, I always have to re-enter all of the publishing information for each site. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just copy them for one version to another. Now you can migrate existing file definitions from version 3 to version 4. You will need to copy the SiteData directory (or just certain folders from that directory)
