Microsoft Expression Web: A Worthy Web Dev Successor to FrontPage? Exit FrontPage, Enter Expression Web Lee Underwood
We're generally skeptical about WYSIWYG editors, even when they have a "code view." We're also quite hesitant about Microsoft editors, especially with the extra code they usually throw in. That said, Microsoft recently launched a new editor package called Expression Web.
According to its Web site, Microsoft FrontPage will be discontinued and this is its replacement. Let's take the new kid for a test drive and see if Expression Web is different (i.e. better) than its predecessor.
(I want to preface this review by stating that I've never personally used FrontPage. I use the NoteTab Pro text editor for all my design, development, and writing work. I've only had to deal with cleaning up the mess that FrontPage has left behind, both in abundant extraneous code and the problems it creates for new Web developers.)
Expression Web is billed as being able to "configure flexible schema settings to support all combinations of HTML, XHTML, strict, transitional, frameset, and CSS (1.0, 2.0, and 2.1), plus browser-specific schemas." For a company that makes a browser that has major W3C compatibility issues, that's quite a statement. Expression Web is part of a suite of tools for Web development, much like Microsoft's Office suite.
First Steps
To use the software you need to install Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0 if it's not already on your computer. Also, If you're downloading it from Microsoft's Web site, the program itself is 195.8 MB, so it may take some time to fully download depending upon your connection. (The Web site says the download time for a 56Kb connection is 7 hours and 58 minutes!) Though it takes a bit of time, the installation is simple. With a broadband connection we were soon up and running without any problems.
The opening screen is pretty standard with this type of editor. It consists of task panes on each side of the editing screen, which is in the center. The panes can be moved around to customize the editor to suit your preferences.
The editing screen can display the page in three different modes. In Design mode, the page is shown as it will be displayed on the Web, in a WYSIWYG format. Code mode shows the code only, as in a text-based editor. Both of the modes can be shown in a split screen display, making it easy to code by hand and see the results instantly. The split screens work in unison so changes made in one will also be shown in the other.
This is a large program with many features. You probably won't use most of them but it's always helpful to know that if you need them they're there.
The Task Panes and Other Features
These panes can be displayed as they are needed. They consist of tag and table layouts, CSS properties and related behaviors and tasks, tools for creating accessible and compatible pages, and various other tools which enhance the work process.
As with many of the current editors, included is a feature to automatically complete tags once you've started typing them. You can either select the appropriate tag from a drop-down list or finish the tag and let the editor insert the closing tag, if necessary. It's handy unless you're used to hand coding. In that case, the feature is best turned off.
Most of the commonly used HTML tags can be entered directly by double-clicking on the tag in the HTML task pane. This makes the work effortless, assuming you can find the tag quickly.
