With Expression Blend 3 Preview, you can create Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications for the desktop and Microsoft Silverlight 3 applications for the web.

Expression Blend 3 Preview is a step on a long journey towards tools that are meant to empower designers to participate in the process of software creation in deep, meaningful, and creative ways.

Using Expression Blend 3 Preview, you, the designers, can make computers easier and more fun to use, and can delight customers with great applications and great content.

The download contains a “Using Astoria Offline” document that gives a step-by-step walkthrough to create an offline-enabled application. The walkthrough provides an exploration of the infrastructure and how it can be used to build applications. Additionally, a complete example of an offline-enabled application is included in the download.

This release is built on top of the ADO.NET Data Services v1.0 release and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. This is an early “preview” release, as such, it is not supported and should only be used for prototyping and investigating. As this is a preview release, it is strongly recommended that this release be installed in a test-only environment; a virtual machine is recommended. Please read the included README for more information on support and limitations of this download.

Note: This release is separate from the ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP1 release that will be available soon. Installing this offline preview release on the same system as the v1.5 CTP1 is not supported and it is strongly recommended that you do not install the two releases on the same system.