Follow Up to ASP.NET SIG Meeting - Introduction to Microsoft Expression Web
Yesterday, I talked about Microsoft Expression Web (EW) in JAXDUG ASP.NET SIG Meeting. Thanks to all who attended this meeting. Most of the presentation focused on demonstrations with the tool's capabilities. Expression Web helps in creating standards based web sites. It has extensive CSS formatting options. There is style redundancy checking and renaming built in. EW comes with ASP.NET 2.0 integration. The tool can generate several reports to check accessibility, compatibility, and CSS Usage. Finally, it is a full fledged development tool with deployment capabilities. As a bonus, you can optimize your deployed source with several options.
Comparing Microsoft Expression Suite with Dreamweaver
There were several questions and comments that came up in the session. One of the comments was that this tool definitely appears to be a strong competitor to Dreamweaver. I searched and found couple of comparison articles:
Microsoft's Expression Web Designer vs. Adobe's Dreamweaver - First Look: Let the rumble begin
Can Microsoft Expression Web Designer Touch Dreamweaver?
There were other questions also that were interesting:
- Is EW integrated with Source Controls tools like VSS? I don't see anything in Beta 1, however I will have to check if EW team has plans to do the integration later.
- EW combines the best of FrontPage and Visual Studio and targets the professional designers. Is there a possibility that EW designer capabilities will become part of the next version of Visual Studio (code named Orcas)? I am not sure, if the EW / Visual Studio team is thinking on these lines.
Resources on Expression Web
Microsoft Expression Home
Microsoft Expression Web Home
Microsoft Expression Web - Tours and Demos
Microsoft Expression Web Beta 1 FAQ
Microsoft Expression Web Download
Expression Team Blog
Web cast - Introduction to Microsoft Expression
First Look at Microsoft Expression Web by Clint Steed
Microsoft Expression Web Designer Newsgroups
Download
Introduction to Microsoft Expression Web
Hope you enjoyed the presentation. Please feel free to contact me with your comments.