Microsoft Expressions Beta

[SoftWx]

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/web_designer/wd_free_trial.aspx

Microsoft has new product for web design - Microsoft Expression - and it looks fairly interesting after taking a quick look. It does not seem inexorably tied to IIS, it has a neat scheme for handling page templates, is geared toward CSS layouts, has good "whole site" mangement rather than being a single page editor, has a nice split (psuedo-wysiwyg + raw html) editor, and even has tools for standards and accessibility validation, which is suprising to see given MS's previous web tools.

Drawbacks are (drumroll) heavy weight, mega size bloatware (200+MB), and normal beta issues. I got it to go into a 100% cpu lock up within about 15 minutes of installing it, but it's been ok since then.

Might be worth a look for those with some time to tinker with something new. Definitely more useful than Visual Studio Express Web Edition, especially if you shun the ASP stuff.

Steve
SoftWx

[niko]

I hear rumors that it's even compliant 

[aardvark]

I still have FrontPage 2003 on board and very probably hang on to that.

[jmcmurry]

I'm still very happy with Dreamweaver, but may have to take a look at Expression.  - Jim

[administrator]

Has anyone seen any suggestions of how much Expressions will cost when it's released? If it's going to be free/nearly free then it's worth downloading to see what it looks like. I don't want to download it, find that it's very good and then find out it's got a $500 price tag when the beta expires!

[gabba]

Hi all

Have been using this for a few months now, and really like it. Most of the stuff I do is for CMS like Mambo/ Joomla, so my only complaint is that it is not great at handling PHP, but having CSS in the same tool as the design app is a real plus. The whole app still shows some of it's frontpage heritage, but has a number of new features that make it worthwhile in my mind

In terms of compliancy - Expressions is much more compliant than Frontpage ever was. For a start styles are embedded in the head section of the page where they should be, automatically. If a style sheet is linked, then ME will automatically add the style to the style sheet (which is sensible).

Cheers

[niko]

Has anyone seen any suggestions of how much Expressions will cost when it's released? If it's going to be free/nearly free then it's worth downloading to see what it looks like. I don't want to download it, find that it's very good and then find out it's got a $500 price tag when the beta expires!

My bet would be that it will list for $300 to $500...

[administrator]

My bet would be that it will list for $300 to $500...

It sounded like that kind of product to me I think I'll wait. There's no point learning/using a new tool for 5 months only to find out it's way too expensive to buy.

[weatheroz]

It sounded like that kind of product to me I think I'll wait. There's no point learning/using a new tool for 5 months only to find out it's way too expensive to buy.

Maybe dropping the hint to mickeysoft that you like the product, but won't take the time to learn how to use it properly as you're worried it's going to end up costing you more than $50 to buy it. 

Start getting a few people talking like that about it, then we all might be lucky for it to come out at around $100 - $150 instead of what most people are believing will be more than $300.


I just hope they've done away with the equivalent of "Frontpage Extensions", whilst they made it more standards compliant. 

[gabba]

I just hope they've done away with the equivalent of "Frontpage Extensions", whilst they made it more standards compliant. 

When trying to open up a non-frontpage site, it gives you an error, saying that "The server sent a response that Sharepoint Designer could not parse"

But as this is a beta, it's kinda hard to work out what that means as the message itself refers to Sharepoint, and not Expressions, and therefore is likely to be changed in some form before relaease

However, my bet is that you will still need FP extns to work the same way as you used to with Frontpage. But there are additional tools like the CSS compliance that makes site development workflow easier overall, in my opinion, even with having to FTP files back up to the server.

[administrator]

Maybe dropping the hint to mickeysoft that you like the product, but won't take the time to learn how to use it properly as you're worried it's going to end up costing you more than $50 to buy it. 

Any idea where I can get about 4 billion people to agree with me? I think it would take that kind of number to get MS to change their mind. And if they make it too cheap the competition will bleat on about how MS are undercutting the market with a loss leader and then get their anti-MS buddies in the EU to ban sales of it in Europe.

[bwawsc]

I still like Notepad...

[weatheroz]

Any idea where I can get about 4 billion people to agree with me? I think it would take that kind of number to get MS to change their mind. And if they make it too cheap the competition will bleat on about how MS are undercutting the market with a loss leader and then get their anti-MS buddies in the EU to ban sales of it in Europe.

Yeah, I know what you mean.... I guess my suggestion wasn't much more than wishful thinking anyway.

But if people start to talk about the idea of it only being worth $50, then there might be a very remote chance that ms will see that people don't think it's worth all that much.

[SoftWx]

Based on the pricing of a similar product (Expression Graphic Designer) at Microsoft, and a web page at amazon that probably was put up too soon, it looks like Expression Web's suggested price will be $299 (full retail), and $99 if you are upgrading from FrontPage (and probably for Visual Studio users as well). Price has not been officially released, so this might change before MS makes it official.

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/how_to_buy.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Expression-Web-1-0-Upgrade/dp/B000IBVVL8

Steve

[administrator]

That's made my mind up then. I'll stick with vi (actually it's vim, but I've saved typing an extra character by calling it vi!)