Expression Web, a new tool for creating and maintaining Web sites, improves Microsoft's support for important Web standards, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), as well as features of ASP.NET 2.0. However, unlike previous Microsoft Web tools, Expression Web must be purchased separately; like the other members of the planned Expression product family, it is not included in MSDN Universal subscriptions.

Web Standards Support

Although FrontPage and Visual Studio both offer what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing of HTML, neither is tailored for designers. Visual Studio, for example, uses a project system that is designed to scale up to extremely large application development projects but which is overkill for most Web sites, while FrontPage has been discontinued altogether.

Expression Web fills an important gap in Microsoft's Web tools lineup by giving professional Web designers a tool that supports important Web standards

CSS. CSS is far and away the most common way for Web designers to specify the appearance of Web pages. Rather than embedding formatting information, such as color and fonts, in each element on a Web page, CSS allows designers to create a style sheet that describes the appearance of elements on a page and to apply those styles, rather than full formatting information, to the page elements. The appearance of the site can then be changed by updating the style sheet instead of updating each element of every page. Expression Web provides a WYSIWYG way to create and update style sheets and preview the results. Changing the font for a block of text, for example, automatically changes the underlying style sheet. Expression Web supports CSS versions 1.0, 2.0, and 2.1, as well as the subset of CSS used by Internet Explorer 6.0.

XHTML. Expression Web supports XHTML—a combination of HTML and XML developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and designed to fix problems in the original HTML specification. In addition, Expression Web supports a number of important XHTML flavors, including XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, and Frameset, as well as XHTML 1.1. Expression Web makes sure that any custom code entered by the designer conforms to the selected format.

Although Expression Web can be used to create Web sites for any Web server, some features take particular advantage of Microsoft's ASP.NET 2.0 technology, including Master Pages, a feature that makes it easier to define a common layout for multiple pages on a site.

Not Expensive, but Not Included in MSDN

Expression Web carries an estimated retail price of US$299. Although that price is lower than competing products, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, developers should note that Expression Web is not included in any MSDN subscriptions.

MSDN Universal was originally pitched as "one-stop shopping" for developers, containing everything a professional developer would need to build solutions for the Microsoft platform, including test versions of all Microsoft OSs, server products, developer tools, and even the Office suite.

In 2005, Microsoft made changes in the MSDN program, including renaming MSDN Universal to MSDN Premium and announcing that some developer products, such as the server portion of Visual Studio Team System, would not be included and must be purchased separately.

Although future versions of Visual Studio may include improved standards compliance, until that time, designers and developers looking for a standards-compliant Web authoring tool must purchase Expression Web despite having already paid for an MSDN subscription.

Other Design Tools Coming

Expression Web is the first product in what will be a family of products for professional designers. Related products are currently available in preview form and are expected to ship in the second quarter of 2007.

Expression Blend allows designers to build user interfaces and animations based on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). It competes with tools built around Adobe's Flash technology and will carry an estimated retail price of US$499.

Expression Media is a tool that lets designers catalog and organize graphics, sound, and video files and convert video files into formats supported by WPF. It is based on iView MediaPro, acquired in June 2006, and will carry a retail price of US$299. iView MediaPro is currently available and customers will receive a free upgrade to Expression Media when it ships.

Expression Design is an illustration and graphic design tool built around XAML—the XML-based format at the heart of WPF. It combines elements of pixel-based and vector-based graphics programs. Microsoft positions it as complementing tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

In addition, Microsoft will offer Expression Studio—a bundle of all the Expression tools—for US$599. Expression Design will be available only as part of the Expression Studio and will not be sold separately.

Resources

The Expression home page is www.microsoft.com/products/expression.

Preview versions of Expression Design and Expression Blend are at www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/expression-design/free-trial.mspx and www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/Expression-Blend/try.mspx.