Discussion on:

What Microsoft's Expression line offers Web designers

I've been using it, I like the ability to create css based page designs from templates, saves about 4 steps in the initial page development, ;^).
I've been doing my basic design and layout with it and then moving into Dreamweaver for the fine tuning and back end coding.
It's a welcome addition to my toolbox..............

That's going to be the real question isn't it? If you are coming to the marketplace with a product, you need to have an advantage over your competition.

Currently I use Visual Web Developer, Dreamweaver and Visual Studio to develop websites. Not sure if I need a 4th tool, unless this proves to be a merging of VWD and Dreamweaver of sorts.

Expressions Web is much of a joke as Dreamweaver, FrontPage, and every other WYSIWYG tool on the market...If you can't (and don't) hand code, you're in the wrong line of work - period. No self-respecting developer relies on a cheesy drag and drop interface to hack out their pages. And the graphics editor (Expressions Design) is just MS Paint reborn...again, a total joke.

Thanks, but I'll stick to Visual Studio .NET and Photoshop / Illustrator to get the job done right.

I've been hand-coding for years, and I can create a page in Vi/Notepad/BBEdit if I have to, without even thinking of it.

I've been using DW since the MX days. At first, I just used it because I liked the code completion/code highlighting. Then once in a while I would go into "design" mode. It was useful for checking how my code changes looked, without having to switch to a browser and refresh the page.

Then about a year and a half ago, I started spending more and more time in design mode. The reason is because it makes me 50-75% more efficient.

Think of it this way. I used to be a VC++ developer, using MFC. And I used to hand code my .rc files. But there comes a time, when the GUI is getting complicated, that it's just not feasible to code it by hand. It's repetitive, error-prone, and too hard to keep the whole thing in your head. Putting it into a visual designer makes it faster. Period.

If you're doing backend-only programming, then a WYSIWYG is of little benefit. But if you want something that looks professional, and you don't want to get bogged down in the minutiae of the code, then a WYSIWYG is your best friend. It makes you faster, and allows you to concentrate on the details, quickly make changes to display of the page, and experiment quickly with different design ideas - instead of spending valuable time creating the skeleton.

Yes, yes, the usual humdrum about how WYSIWYG being inferior, cuz you obviously gots mad hand coding skills, yada yada...

Fact is, 99% of my work is hand coding. But I prefer DreamWeaver, because hand coding is more efficient, you can maintain cleaner code (easier), and it has the O-Reilly books integrated into the help system.

Any self-respecting developer will use whatever tools he can to streamline the process, clean up his code, whatevs. I prefer hand coding most elements, but there can be benefits to the WYSIWYG modes as well...

However, I must say, no self-respecting DEVELOPER wastes his time in Photoshop. Leave design elements to the graphics kiddies and focus on your code. Poser.

Dude: you're scaring away the chicks. Chill on the name-callin.

Photoshop is no more a waste of time than Quack 4.

Now get back to typing.

...Assuming by your scintillating use of diction ("cuz," "mad skills," "whatevs," and "Phreak") I can only assume you're a 19 year old, out of work support tech with an axe to grind. And if you think Dreamweaver writes "clean code," you need some serious re-education.

Actually, there are some of us out here who do design AND development - myself included. I enjoy both equally, and it also keeps me immune from the effects of outsourcing to third-world countries (like many of my previous dev-only co-workers), since design is not something they can do at all. So believe whatever you like, but I can guarantee I'll have a job long after yours goes to Manilla, Hyderabad, or some other backwater burg.

But I have been using SharePoint Designer which is the other product brought out by Micr$oft to replace FrontPage. I have heard SPD works a lot like Expression Web, and I have personally noticed the similarities between SPD and Dreamweaver.

I do think it was one of M$ better moves getting rid of FrontPage to make space for these products and up to now, I've had no real problems with SharePOint Designer, and much prefer it to using FrontPage like I had to last year, but, we know only time will tell!!

Using it, thumbs up. Once you get used to the interface you may never want another web development package. FrontPage isn't needed anymore. I preferred FrontPage's simplicity over Dreamweaver's features. But now you can have both.

I bought Expression Web but haven't yet installed it - how tough is it going to be to get used to this versus FrontPage that I've been using for years - usually in split view.

It wasn't clear from the article. Will it be able to take the place of FrontPage as the main website management utility of websites that live on Linux Servers using the FrontPage Server Extensions? Or is FrontPage the end of the road for a MS tool to develop and maintain websites on non-MS web servers?

..so when you say other languages are left out in the cold - will it providing coding hints at all, or are they completely unsupported?

I'm using the trial version to see if I want to purchase it. I'm getting used to it, but can't find some of the features that Front Page offered such as photo galleries, photo resizing, even link bars based on navigation rather than putting them in one by one.
JB IA

Expression Web code does not compile in Visual Studio. I took a large project and imported it into VS 2008. On each compile, VS compiler maxes out on the number of errors and stops. I have been at this for 4 hours and have fixed about 300 errors, there is no end in sight; ther are compile time errors in a bunch of includes it uses.