July 2007

Microsoft has finally come out with totally new website design program that allows you to design compliant sites!!!

Expression Web lets you do website design with CSS-based layouts, and has a new, awesome rendering engine that lets you truly see how your code will look in the browser as you are working on it.

I have just downloaded and installed Expression Web on my computer, and I will write a more detailed review of the program after I have had time to play with it.

UPDATE: I have just finished using this program for a little over an hour and a half, AND I LOVE IT!!!

If you have resisted learning Dreamweaver because you thought it was just too complicated or difficult to use, give Expression Web a try. Those of us who are used to the Microsoft interface for programs like MS Word and Excel will feel at home right away.

Expression Web highlights  non-compliant code in yellow, like Dreamweaver, and tells you what’s wrong. It lets you edit PHP pages within the design-view window. Also, if you hightlight a section of the page you are working on in the design-view window, it shows all the CSS styles associated with that class or ID, and you can change these styles on the fly….

For those of you who have ever used Frontpage, one of the biggest improvements of Expression Web over Frontpage is the ‘add hyperlink’ interface: when you highlight text to add a hyperlink in Expression Web, YOU CAN FINALLY PASTE THE LINK URL into the pop-up hyperlink dialog box!!! This alone makes it worth upgrading to Expression Web if you currently use Frontpage.

Also, if you are used to Frontpage, the learning curve for Expression Web will not be very steep.

If you code websites, try the demo version of this program and see how you like it.