Expression Web

Poor old FrontPage. While it always tried hard, it was easily outclassed by Dreamweaver, leaving it with a bad reputation for amateurish clumsiness that was all too often entirely deserved. When Microsoft announced it was creating an updated designer’s tool, many people thought it was FrontPage 12.

Instead Microsoft released Expression Web, which is a far more serious contender. The application is part of the Expression Studio, a collection of products that represent Microsoft’s attempt to gain a foothold in the design and graphics market currently monopolised by Adobe.

First impressions are that Dreamweaver and Expression Web have much in common. The various panes and windows – 18 in all – can be opened, tabbed and closed in an instantly familiar way. Like Dreamweaver, Web uses DOCTYPE options for its documents and offers support for different standards. Dreamweaver has been starting to sprawl in the last few updates, while Web ties together all of the most important standards into one bundle, so you can easily choose to work with XHTML and HTML transitional and strict DOCTYPEs, with schema settings suitable for different flavours of Internet Explorer and CSS. Previewing is quick and easy and can be preset to show various resolutions. The defaults are IE6 (why no IE7?) and Firefox 1.5, but you can also add your own installed browsers to the list.

Expression Web’s strong point is its CSS handling. A reports feature provides a very useful summary of CSS elements – a real time saver for some projects. Design is WYSIWYG, and you add all of the usual web page elements from a toolbox, together with a selection of ASP.NET controls. The layout tables include a good selection of preset layouts. If you prefer to hand-code you’ll find errors are flagged instantly. The standards support means that older tags – BLINK, <br> and so on – are explicitly deprecated.

On the downside, Expression Web’s preset templates are underwhelming, and it would’ve been helpful for both experienced designers and beginners to have a wider range of more advanced options, including drop-down or slide-out menus and other design essentials. In terms of tutorial support, there’s a video tutorial DVD, and also some rather minimal online tutorials, which are useful but a little thin on the ground.

Overall, Expression Web has a lot going for it. But there’s a me-too feeling about it. A more innovative tool would have included full support for AJAX and other evolving technologies. And Microsoft’s tendency to only support its own technologies, in the form of ASP. NET, to the detriment of de facto standards, such as PHP, does Expression Web no favours.

But those gripes aside, we think this is a reasonable, and occasionally more elegant, alternative to Dreamweaver.