Five Community Technology Previews of Expression Graphic Designer have already been released since last year.

Jeffrey Chiang, an interactive designer at San Francisco design firm Gotomedia Inc., said that while Expression Graphic Designer's features are "quite interesting," the interface needs a lot of work to keep designers used to the Adobe and Macromedia user interfaces from getting "frustrated."

Expression Interactive Designer, on the other hand, has had only one CTP released since January. It won't be released until 2007, after Windows Vista is out, Smith said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is expected to release its first beta of Web design software during the Mix Conference.

Cuenco said that while Adobe software such as Flash may be great for developing Web-based applications for consumers, it can't compete with WPF when developing graphically-enhanced Windows applications for business users.