Expression Web Developer Review
 For years one of the staples in any web
designer/developers arsenal has been
Dreamweaver. I have been using Dreamweaver
since version 4 and nothing else, especially
Front Page, would compare to it. As a matter
of fact the last version of Front Page that
I used was Front Page 97. Microsoft just did
not have a product that would compete on the
market with Dreamweaver. So imagine my
surprise when I downloaded the beta of
Expression Web Developer a month ago. One of
the benefits that was immediate is you can
use master pages in your design if you
develop in asp.net 2.0, as this author does.
The interface has been revamped and anyone
familiar with Visual Studio will quickly
find familiarity with the interface and how
to customize it to their liking. Support for
CSS is very important in any newer web
development tool and Expression Web
Developer does not disappoint in this area.
This review is based on the beta 1 version
of the program so there may be some changes
made to the interface and general design in
a later beta.
I am a designer and developer and I use
ASP.NET 1.0 - 2.0. Dreamweaver supported and
still supports user controls (although it
took an extension to get them to display
properly in Dreamweaver MX in the early days
of .NET. But with the release of .NET 2.0
Dreamweaver does not support all of the
features or I should more correctly say
render the features of ASP.NET 2.0. ASP.NET
2.0 incorporates some very nice design
features that make life easier for a
developer. Master pages allow us to use a
single master page in our application and
make any design changes quickly across all
pages with out time consuming page by page
changes. Now I realize that anyone who has
been working with web pages for any length
of time has figured out how to use Templates
in Dreamweaver. Templates and user controls
was how I built applications and even simple
brochure ware web sites using ASP.NET 1.0 &
1.1. I would switch between Dreamweaver for
design and then back to Visual Studio for
the development. Even with the changes made
to Visual Studio 2005 I still like using
Dreamweaver as my design and front end
editing program. My only dislike is the lack
of support for master pages. In Expression
Web Developer native support for ASP.NET 2.0
is built in, as it should be from a
Microsoft offering. This allows me to
continue to use a program that is designed
with its main focus on design and not
development. Any of you who are only
developers and do not worry about front end
design work would not need to worry about
getting this because Visual Studio will do
everything that you need.
The interface of Expression Web Developer
is familiar to those using any of the Visual
Studio versions and can be tailored to your liking.
Familiar elements like the toolbox contain
tags, form controls, asp.net controls,
standard controls just to name a few. You
can adjust and maybe more importantly see
all of the properties that a tag has
available with the tag properties docker.
From the tool box you can use the familiar
drag and drop of the controls onto the
page. One of the better dockers is the
Manage Styles docker where you can edit and
add new styles in a visual interface that is
well done. Using the apply styles you can
get a quick preview of the style before you
apply it to an element. One of the visual
elements using css that I like is the margin
and padding of the div elements. You can see
what you margins look like and this is a big
help when using CSS for layouts and finding
that one setting that is breaking your
layout.
To build a page you have your standard
views of Design, Split, and Code. Expression
Web Designer will not destroy your markup
when switching between views which for a
control freak like me makes all of the
difference. The intellisense is top notch
with all types of tags and when selecting
the id or class you can choose from the
styles already defined with a drop-down. You
can control click on a link or a class and
go directly to the definition or page. This
is a handy feature when designing a page
layout and you want to jump to the
definition of the content in the css file
quickly. Most of the ASP.NET 2.0 Data,
Validation, Navigation, and Login controls
are available for a quick drag and drop
setup as they are in Visual Studio to allow
you to design quicker. For example the
ASP.NET 2.0 login control can be added to
the page by selecting the login section from
the Toolbox and dragging the login control
onto the page where you want it. You can
auto format the control, convert it to a
template and administer the web site
(although this feature does not work in the
beta version). You can change the page size
that is viewable by clicking on the icon on
the bottom status bar so that your design
view is in line with the setting you are
shooting for.
The compatibility checker is a great tool
for validating your markup and css code. By
running the compatibility reports tool from
the Tools menu item Expression Web Developer
will check the pages for errors according to
your settings and list them by page. Simply
by double clicking on the item you can go
and correct the problem quickly. An
Accessibility report can be run on the site
and display any problems encountered. The
two tools are great to run at any time
during development of the site so that you
do not have to make sweeping changes at the
end of development.
All in all this is a very good offering
from Microsoft in terms of web design that
will offer a good amount of competition to
Dreamweaver and of course offer us in the
design and development field a choice on
which design tool we will use based on our
unique styles and design patterns. You can
download the beta and try it out for
yourself.
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/web_designer/default.mspx
Brian Simmons
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