Yesterday the Microsoft Expression Media Team released the first Milestone of their new Expression Media version to the TAP Testers. Not much has changed at this stage, only some bugs were fixed and the Team begun working on the new Features planned for the Service Pack 1. The version number of this Milestone is 2.0.1584.0; there will be at least two more Milestones up to the final release during the next weeks/months.

Here are the planned features for the Service Pack 1:

• Hierarchical Keywords: Remove child node when removing parent, improve relationship between hierarchical keywords and flat list keywords, Improve parent/child drag behaviors.
• Geo-tagging/Virtual Earth: Add drag and drop capabilities within the Virtual Earth window, display keywords when dragging image onto VE window, Make the GPS annotation fields user editable, Sniff GPS locations from URL, handle more lat and long coordinate formats, add lat and long tags to HTML galleries.
• Raw Image support: The Windows version now has a preference that allows the user to choose if Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is used for raw image. You may find changing this option improves the color or speeds up the display.
• Info Panel: Template event date not being saved correctly, author details not being displayed correctly, NEF import not displaying annotated date.
• Catalog Editing: Improve user messages when unable to complete request, support long paths and long file names when resetting paths, do not revert to 8.3 filename when media is offline, do not create unexpected duplicates, allow user to configure default open location, show full path in catalog finder.
• Import: Add support for large files in HTML galleries (16000×8000 image), improve rendering performance of NEF files, display EXIF data for ARW files, increase media import limit from the Windows Explorer right-click menu, read color profiles on import, fix issues related to import from camera disk.
• Light Table: Fix multi-item drawing issue, change behavior of delete button, fix position of magnifier pointer, resolve keyboard shortcut issues, improve user experience when switching between full screen and windowed mode.
• In application help: More than 50 updates to help contents.

I hope this release is useful for you, but remember this is a pre-release version, it can damage your catalog files or cause any other issues. Do not use it in a production environment. As soon as there is a new version out, I will make it available here.