Microsoft Expression Web Designer, releasing soon
FrontPage is too old, and Dreamweaver is creaking under
too many changes. Will Microsoft Express Web Designer prove
a worthy competitor?
Microsoft has added a new phrase in the web: Microsoft Expression Web. Microsoft Expression Web Designer is new product expected to hit the shelves by 2007. One would not like to call it a replacement for FrontPage, it is rather a competition to
Dreamweaver.
Why does Microsoft think that there is a room for another
Dreamweaver?
Well. We have all been getting use to the term Web 2.0 over the last couple of years. The term has come to represent the new era of Web technologies offered to designers, developers, and interactive artists. This new age is built on certain standards. There are design standards, such as Cascading Style Sheets; meta data standards, such as XHMTL; data transfer standards, such as XML; and accessibility standards for the visually impaired. Design tools for the Web artist are needed to support these standards.
For the last nine years one tool has dominated the Web design world: Dreamweaver. Standards have always been a part of Dreamweaver. The problem is that, over the last decade and a half, the standards have changed. HTML 2.0 led to HTML 3.2, which in turn became HTML 4.0 and now is XHTML -- you can also throw in changes for style management with Cascading Style Sheets, scripting (how many different variations of Javascript can we support?) and specializations in the Web browsers themselves. The bottom line is that Dreamweaver has attempted to support too many legacy standards. The result is a bloody mess.
What’s there in the Expression Web Menu ?
The designer has to just mention the standard with browser and css version he is intended to use and he gets complete schema support complaint of XHTML. This would mean auto-completion of HTML tags, Real time standards validations and conformity to accessibility standards.
Professional Design
On the surface, Microsoft product users won't find the screen very different then the standard development IDEs. CSS Rendering Engine which represents the look of the final browser page with checks on CSS
compliances. And most interestingly there are bunch of standard compliant and cool looking templates bundled with the product.
When will Microsoft Expression Web ready?
Microsoft Expression public beta pretty much contains everything that will be in the final product. Microsoft hopes to have it out by the end of this year, or early 2007 at the latest, according to Wayne Smith, senior product manager for Expression Web.
As with other Microsoft beta software, the company is looking for a wide range of testers. "In testing a product, you can’t recreate every type of Web page that's possible, so we’re looking for standards compliance feedback for all types of pages," said Smith.
Although Expression Web is meant to offer a more comprehensive product than creaky, old, FrontPage, Smith said it's still approachable by beginners.
"Just because it’s a professional tool doesn’t mean it’s a complex product to use," he said. "We tried to make the UI as approachable as possible. There's no reason less-skilled people can’t use it to make a Web site. There’s something there for everyone."
Download
a demo here
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