Acquiring Microsoft Expression Blend

Question

I'm having some serious trouble downloading Microsoft Expression Blend. I want to learn to work with Microsoft Silverlight, so I downloaded Visual Studio Express 2013 for Web Update 1. I have created a silverlight project and edited it successfully, and now I'm at the point in my learning in which Expression Blend comes in handy (animations and styling).

On the Microsoft Expression download page, it is clearly stated that "Blend continues to ship as a standalone tool with Visual Studio 2013". However, I cannot find Blend anywhere on my Windows 7 laptop, nor do I see any way to open Blend from within Visual Studio.

I do know that all the things that can be done in Expression Blend can be done in Visual Studio programmatically, but I would prefer to do them visually in Blend.

To use Expression Blend, do I need a different version of Visual Studio (Web vs Desktop etc.)? Do I need to update Visual Studio? Is it required that I buy the professional edition?

Answer 1

From your link it states:

You can download Blend for Visual Studio 2013 with Visual Studio Express for Windows, Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone, and Visual Studio Professional 2013 and higher.

No mention of Visual Studio for Web. So you need to Download one of the above mentioned express versions or spring for the professional edition.