pageoneresults - 6:19 pm on Dec 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

Received and installed my copy of Microsoft® Expression® Web Designer from Amazon a little over a week ago. The installation went without a hitch.

Note: The official name is Microsoft® Expression®. Many are referring to it as EWD or Expression® Web Designer.

I tested the pre-release versions a bit and the final release isn't any different with the exception of the bugs being worked out. For intermediate FrontPage 2003 users, there really isn't too much of a difference.

But, for advanced users who like to work under the hood, there is great news! Expression® Web has taken all the WYSIWYG functions and converted them to their CSS equivalents. No more <font> tags, they are gone! This means that new websites designed using Expression® Web will be totally reliant upon CSS.

I can still see where an inexperienced user could get themselves into trouble by styling to their hearts content. They may end up with 30, 40, 50 lines of embedded styles in the head of their document. Well, at least that is better than all the <font> tags that were previously generated by FrontPage. You will need to keep an eye out for the new kid on the block, <font> has been replaced with...

<span class=""></span>

Expression® Web will now wrap any styled content within a <span> tag. I'm referring strictly to the WYSIWYG functionality and not attaching a custom style sheet and using the styles menu.

Some additional notes...

Formatting Marks

They've extended one of my favorite features of all time, Formatting Marks. But, they changed something that doesn't sit quite well with me. Ctrl + /. That is the Reveal Tags command in previous versions of FrontPage. Expression Web no longer supports that keyboard shortcut and you now have to select it from the ¶ toolbar menu which contains a few new formatting marks.

For the advanced user of FrontPage 2003, you're going to appreciate the new features available. If you're a CSS user, you're really going to like the advanced CSS support.

FrontPage Forms

Oh-oh, it appears that the old style of developing a form in FrontPage has been deprecated and replaced with ASP.NET Controls. There is no longer a > Insert > Form > command. It has been replaced with > Insert > ASP.NET Controls.

When viewing tag marks (that is the replacement for reveal tags), you no longer see your opening and closing <form> elements. That confirms the support is no longer there for the old style of forms. You're going to need to know how to work in code view to make modifications to those forms. Or, you'll rebuild the form using the ASP.NET Controls.

ASP.NET Controls

Wait until you see the list of ASP.NET Controls available to you. Yee-haw! For someone who likes building forms, I'm going to have fun with these. In the past, you had 15 different form functions you could select while in WYSIWYG view. Hehehe, there are now 68 different functions within 6 categories. Let me at em!

I'll have some more reviews as time permits. For the most part, Microsoft® Expression® is FrontPage 2003 on steroids with a host of new advanced features.