Pros & Cons
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- Modern, standards-based Web editor.
- Creates CSS-based Web pages.
- Lets you build and format dynamic data views with a few mouse clicks.
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- No automated help for PHP pages.
- Can't publish directly via Secure FTP.
Microsoft Expression Web is now in the stores after a
At first glance, Expression Web looks like the late, lamented FrontPage 2003, as it uses a similar menu structure and a similar choice of more-or-less WYSIWYG design view, pure-code view, and a view with the code on top and the visual design at the bottom. New task panes and toolbars create and edit CSS styles and give point-and-click control over XML data sources. Expression Web abandons FrontPage's proprietary Web 'bots, which required special "additions" installed on your Web server. The app does, however, let you reuse the FrontPage feature that automatically inserts the latest revision date on a page. The FrontPage features that still work are the ones that create standards-based code for any browser and any Web server.
A "master page" feature makes it easy to create a consistent site by using templates for material that gets repeated on multiple pages and limiting the regions where you can edit any individual page. Dynamic data views are almost as effortless, and it took me only a few mouse clicks to create and format a dynamic view of my site's RSS feed on the site's front page. After choosing the XML file from a list of data sources, I picked the elements from the feed that I wanted displayed and then selected a bulleted-list format from a layout gallery—simple. If you know the basics of Cascading Style Sheets, a simple right-click on an element gives you easy control over formatting a data view.
The next steps—which entailed a more difficult learning curve—involved right-clicking on elements such as item titles to format them as hyperlinks. I skipped the tutorial, so it took me a while to find the "Function" button on the Hyperlink dialog that controls these features. You might want to save time and trouble later by taking a few moments to let the tutorials show you the technique.
If you work in code view, an "Intellisense" drop-down list offers to complete your codes for you. Microsoft supplies Intellisense for HTML and its own ASP.NET language, but you'll have to check your own code if you create PHP pages—or work with Dreamweaver and one of the PHP-helper extensions available on Adobe's Web site. Add-ins for Expression Web are just starting to appear, and you won't find the range of add-ins that is available for Dreamweaver—yet.
The only serious problem I found with Expression Web was its lack of support for Secure FTP file transfers for publishing a site to the Web. If your server requires Secure FTP, then you'll have to upload your files using a separate FTP program, and you won't be able to use Expression Web's well-designed automated feature that optimizes code when uploading.
Still, this is a minor complaint about an elegant and efficient application—one that not only makes designing a page simpler but even makes designing a standards-compliant page easier. The beta was a long haul, but, in the end, the time was well spent. Microsoft Expression Web definitely deserves an Editors' Choice, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who builds Web pages, no matter how simple or how complex.
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Final Thoughts
Microsoft Expression Web
Unless you're married to Dreamweaver, Expression Web is the editor to use for modern, efficient Web sites.