These days, though you often wonder if fully-released versions differ from that condition, everyone’s doing prolonged public betas of imaging software. Microsoft have joined in too, releasing Expression Media 2 (formerly iView) as a beta for Windows and Mac.

Nearly two years since the acquisition, Microsoft haven’t ruined the program, but there’s surprisingly little progress or persuasive reasons to switch from iView. There is some good stuff, like effectively-eliminating the Windows program’s dependence on Apple QuickTime, but the few new features are mostly half-done.

For example, the hierarchical keywords feature lets you assign pictures to a leaf node in the new Keywords Finder, and the image automatically gets all its parents keywords. Great. But the opposite should happen when I delete images from that node ? the ?real? keywords should be deleted too.

Or take the new Virtual Earth window which displays where you took GPS-tagged pictures. On Windows dragging untagged images to the VE window will add GPS coordinates to the catalogue. Sounds handy. But you must first centre the map at exactly the right location and then drop those images in a rectangular area at the top of the window. Why can’t you drop them on directly on the map? And on the Mac, drag and drop to the VE window doesn’t work at all. So good idea has been so insufficiently developed that it’s not all that useful.

Working my way through the other new features, I’m also pretty underwhelmed by “Support of new file formats”. Firstly, EM2 will no longer import DNG files on Windows XP, most likely because I have not installed a Codec. OK, I’m the sort of bloke who might know that’s the case, but at the very least EM2 should tell me what?s up, and point me to where I get the solution. If someone has failed to provide the Codec, the web page should say who has agreed to do so, and by when. Or Microsoft should simply do what Apple and a one man band have done and write their own. Really, the user shouldn?t even have to think about this.

Secondly, “Support of new file formats” includes the new MS Office 2007 formats. OK, we all know “support” is a malleable term, but “support” really has to go beyond importing and showing file icons, which you could already do in iView using the custom.txt file. It should mean displaying document previews, which you still can’t do. I also expect that when I enter keywords in Word or Excel (in Document Properties), I should also see them in EM2. After all I can see the caption, author, title and other properties. Why have keywords been forgotten? It can’t be rocket science – I can do it in VBS via Microsoft’s own dsofile.dll. I also expect to Sync from EM2 back into Office documents. Again, no can do.

If you read this blog, you’ll know I’m no Microsoft basher – quite the opposite. But my feeling for this EM2 beta is rather like my reaction to Aperture 1.7, sorry 2 – it seems harmless.