Comments on: Microsoft Expression Web Designer CTP 1

By: InsideWorks

InsideWorks — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:37:33 +0000

I must have missed something when I was using Web Designer. I design with Front page and Dreamweaver MX and Version 8 and Web Designer was the worst thing I have used since my early days of using homesite or pagemill.

Seriously folks…. do you guys work for Microsoft or something?

By: Kevin Cannon

Kevin Cannon — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:52:59 +0000

Having tried Expression Web Designer I have to disagree with a few of the points in this review.

First of all, Dreamweaver does producte valid XHTML.
I had high hopes for EWD with all the talk about webstandards, but sadly it’s not quite up to scratch.

It doesn’t handle external CSS files as well as dreamweaver, and resizin anything results in tons of inline styles.

As for looking Web 2.0? What a strange comment. It just looks like any other editor, Topstyle mashed with Visual Studio really.

It’s not a bad piece of software, it’s easily as good as Dreamweaver, albeit with a focus on MS technology, which is a shame,

By: Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

Mahmoud Al-Qudsi — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 17:38:15 +0000

Here you are: http://neosmart.net/gallery/v/apps/Expression/

Enjoy!

By: Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

Mahmoud Al-Qudsi — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:17:11 +0000

Not at all… We were busy with EasyBCD or VistaBootPRO (can’t remember which), I’ll get the team to upload them later today :)

Thanks for the heads up :D

By: ketsugi

ketsugi — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:11:05 +0000

No screenshots? Or are you restricted by an NDA?

By: Salty

Salty — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:08:27 +0000

Good review. You’re right. Expression Web Designer is going to be a very successful product (unless MS manages to mangle it in the final phases of development). I understand that even Dreamweaver users are very complimentary.

I loved Expression the moment I started it up. Its interface is similar enough to FrontPage (this is, after all, FrontPage 2007 with a new name) to be easy for FrontPage users to quickly learn, and it has all the features needed–plus some–to build XHTML- and CSS-validating web pages for the contemporary World Wide Web.

Unfortunately, this is pre-Beta. I loaded this on my office PC, and was loving the whole experience until I tried to save a file. It exploded in my face, then wanted to send its failure report to MS. I could not get it to save anything without shutting down like this. So, okay, it was just a test, now to get back to work using FrontPage 2003. Right? Wrong. Now FrontPage did the exact same thing when saving a file. Rebooting the PC didn’t cure it. Reparing the install didn’t cure it. Uninstalling, rebooting, then reinstalling it STILL didn’t cure it. It completely hosed FrontPage 2003. As long as I was working on a site that had been opened using FrontPage Extensions (via selecting http://mysitename) it could not save a file without blowing up. If I opened the site by just opening the site’s network folder, I could save files, but each save took over 3 minutes. If my new PC hadn’t been waiting in the wings, I might have had to reinstall Windows just to fix what Expression broke.

I’ll be very happy when it’s in beta, and more so when it’s released. My IT department will buy thise, rather than going to Dreamweaver as we had originally planned.