visual studio express 2012 for windows desktop and blend

Fri, Dec 5, 2014

2014-11-16 Update

We now have a free version of Visual Studio Professional which includes Blend for WPF desktop apps. Microsoft have released Visual Studio Community 2013:

http://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2013-community-vs

SketchFlow is not included - you still need to buy Premium or Ultimate.

2014-05-12 Update

Nothing has changed on using Blend with “Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop”.

To get Blend you need to buy the “Visual Studio Professional 2013” at $796 Australian dollars.

Also, the Microsoft person could not tell me when the next version would be released or how much it would cost to upgrade to the next version.

Remembering, Microsoft has promised/threatened more frequent upgrade cycles.

As a guide, the upgrade price to VS Pro 2013 is AU$477.

2013-04-24

Blend can not be used with “Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop”.

You must buy at least Visual Studio Professional to create desktop applications with Blend. Sketchflow will not be activated until you buy Visual Studio Premium.

This took hours to discover because of Microsoft’s obtuse product naming and the fact that you could use the preview version of ‘Blend for the desktop + SketchFlow’ with Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.

This fact is buried in the comments here:

http://blendinsider.com/version-update-2/visual-studio-2012-update-2-released-2013-04-04/