Microsoft Expression vs. Dreamweaver

An anonymous reader writes "Informit has a quick look at Microsoft's Expression suite consisting of Graphic Designer, Interactive Designer, and Web Designer in comparison to Dreamweaver. It seems that Microsoft got tired of relying on FrontPage and is actually going after professionals. From the article: 'What designers might not realize is that Microsoft finally drank the Kool-Aid. The Expression Web Designer application walks the Web standards walk. One caution: Web Designer currently only supports ASP.NET. Microsoft built the ASP.NET platform; it isn't a surprise that Expression Web Designer was designed to support that platform. This is obviously a drawback for those designers who work with PHP, JSP, and other non-ASP.NET platforms, making it difficult for Microsoft to expand its reach beyond the ASP.NET users.'"

Comments

hmmm

[macadamia_harold]

It seems that Microsoft got tired of relying on FrontPage and is actually going after professionals. ... This is obviously a drawback for those designers who work with PHP, JSP, and other non-ASP.NET platforms

Yeah, it really sounds like they're going after professionals. (rolleyes)

Re:hmmm

[FyRE666]

Well if a "developer" is dumb enough to lock themselves into ASP.Net, then I hope they use this. Serves them right... The problem is that there really are plenty of Microsoft trained drones out there who have absolutely no idea what exists outside of Microsoft's nice soft world for dummies, and no interest in learning anything ourside of Microsoft either. Which is the way MS likes its monkeys - dumb, and uninterested in expanding their skill set.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Great comment! Everybody knows that M$ developers aren't professionals. That's why, unlike PHP developers, they don't make the big bucks, right? PHP is where all the money is. Microsoft stupid! Yeah!!!

Re:hmmm

[foniksonik]

As a professional I can follow up on this remark. "Whatever tool fits the job." MS in some cases is best but rarely. Most often is is a LAMP platform or LAPP platform unless the requirements dictate a more serious DB, DB2 or Oracle fit the bill in which case it is a LAOJ (Linux, Apache, Oracle and JSP) solution.

Again, rarely, rarely is it ever a MS, IIS, MSSQL, .NET solution (MIM.N for those in the know)..... simply because those systems/apps don't provide anything substantially better than the license free options (dependent on whether the client has ignorantly already paid for them, in which case they are fine solutions).

Re:hmmm

[abandonment]

if you don't think that there are plenty of good paying jobs doing rewarding php/lamp development then you are either living in the wrong city or need to be doing contracting.

there are a LOT of clients that specifically look for non-MS solutions, and if they aren't, you can educate them about the world of stable, easy to develop for software ;}

Re:hmmm

[ClosedSource]

"Serves them right... The problem is that there really are plenty of Microsoft trained drones out there who have absolutely no idea what exists outside of Microsoft's nice soft world for dummies, and no interest in learning anything ourside of Microsoft either."

My idea of a "dummy" is someone who doesn't use every advantage to get it done better, faster and cheaper because they fear they might be doing it the "soft" way. You can't live on programming "manliness".

If you think non-MS tools achieve that goal better, more power to you. But if those non-MS tools start looking "soft" someday, don't let that scare you from using them unless you find a more effective alternative.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

*woosh*

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

a MS, IIS, MSSQL, .NET solution (MIM.N for those in the know)....

Making up your own acronyms and sounding superior because you use it really makes you look professional.

Re:hmmm

[guibaby]

Umm....I can program in perl, C++, TSQL, and C#. I do 99% of my programming in C#/TSQL/ASP.NET. The reason is simple. It is the quickest way to get the job done. I like C# so much, that if I were going to do UNIX work (and I am qualified to), I would probably use mono. I enjoy bashing microsoft as much as the next guy, but they do some things right.

Re:hmmm

[$calar]

Professionals? I thought pros just use text editors. That's what I use. :)

Re:hmmm

[beadfulthings]

What????

If they're going after profesionals, does that mean they're not going to throw a copy in with every copy of Microsoft Office they sell?

I don't see how the Web can survive without all those people adding 32K worth of incomprehensible garbage to their HTML documents each time they want to change a font color.

Re:hmmm

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The problem is this: if you use MS tech, they would prefer that you use only MS tech, to the point that interop is often neglected. MS tools may work for one off solutions, but they limit you to MS tech for the future, unless you want to spend a lot of effort to change.

Re:hmmm

[Nataku564]

C# as a language itself isn't so bad. Its just Java with a bit more C and some tags. The tool they pair it with, however, is absolute crap. Visual Studio's designer, in particular, generates abysmal code. Plus, its near impossible to get Visual Studio to work with _real_ source control - you are locked into their crappy tools for life. Give me Java's, Perl's, or C++'s freedom and community over that any day.

Re:hmmm

[InsertCleverUsername]

I suppose it's a little bit of a tangent (move to Ask Slashdot?), but I would be interested to know what the /. community considers best-of-breed for web dev outside of the M$ camp. I live in a fairly Microsoft-centric area and it's been years since I took a serious look at other solutions.

What IDE, source control, etc. is worth looking into for PHP or JSP development? For those of you that have used (not just tried) both, how do these tools compare to VS2005 in terms of ease of use, development time, ease of deployment, code maintenance, etc.?

Re:hmmm

[LouisZepher]

Well, although I can view images in Dreamweaver, I cannot actually *edit* the files, so therefore, Dreamweaver *is* a "text editor".

Re:hmmm

[PSdiE]

I'm not sure LAOJ works out cheaper than MIMN. Oracle 10i is $15k/processor vs $5.7k/processor for MSSQL 2005. If you're developing for a typical MS corporate environment, that's quite a difference!

Agreed though, "Whatever tool fits the job". If scalability requirements are lower and the deployment environment is flexible/OSS/outsourced, then LAMP will do a great job.

Re:hmmm

[foniksonik]

You're forgetting that you also pay a license for IIS, .Net and the Development tools you'll need to work with them competently which are going to be per seat licenses.... plus you're locked in to MS products and so any scaling needs you have will cost you additional licenses for each of those rather than just for the DB... just a reminder...

Re:hmmm

[brownaroo]

Why is this a troll? Its true. I work with MS tech and I like it - only I'm not paying all the licensing costs my organisation is. It is possible to use non MS techs along with them but life's so much easier if you do it all the MS way - which of course leads to more licensing costs

Re:hmmm

[brownaroo]

hehehe +5 Funny

Re:hmmm

[Saint Fnordius]

If you'll re-read his post, you'll see that you just made his point for him. It's a dirty little truth that gets ignored that we webmonkeys don't get to choose which server script langueages are available to us. I prefer PHP, as do 80% of my clients, but there are a few out there who want ASP because their host supports that, and one lone fellow demands JSP.

So, by sticking to Microsoft-only, you are crippling yourself. You may find your new employer wants somebody with PHP or JSP know-how. If you're applying for a job at amarketing firm, you'd better be able to use Mac OS X tools as well, and know enough to test them on a Windows before putting them online.

Re:hmmm

[ishepherd]

.Net - free

Development tools - uh, I think the parent is talking about scaling to handle volume of users. Not scaling the size of the development team. In any case, if you're taking on more dev staff, $hundreds on another seat of Visual Studio is the least of your expenses.

Your valid point is that for another IIS box you have to pay for another Windows Server license. In a Windows environment, they expect that anyway as part of the expense of a new box.

Re:hmmm

[orasio]

Eclipse 3.2 (Web Tools Project for JSP, and PHPEclipse for PHP)

But if you are actually programming with JSP, maybe you are doing something wrong.
You could use a nice framework for java webapps. JSF is nice, and WTP supports it.

Re:hmmm

[foniksonik]

If you have to pay a license for a server to run the software I wouldn't call .Net free but sure I'll concede it's not an additional expense.

However, just because you run Windows in the office and have an Exchange server and an IIS server running a few old Access apps you haven't ported over, doesn't mean you have to go a pay again when it comes time to deploy your new CRM or a new set of web services... and it would be a lazy CTO who would decide to go that direction just because... kind of sad to think that people just expect to pay it.

Re:hmmm

[InsertCleverUsername]

Thanks. Looks like a good starting point.

Re:hmmm

[godefroi]

I work all day, every day, in Visual Studio (2003 and 2005), producing both websites and applications, and I use exclusively subversion for source control.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

People like crack too, doesn't mean its good, but dealing it is a profitable business.

Difficult? For what?

[RobertM1968]

"This is obviously a drawback for those designers who work with PHP, JSP, and other non-ASP.NET platforms, making it difficult for Microsoft to expand its reach beyond the ASP.NET users.'"

I think what this is designed to do is ensure that other Open (or even not so open) standards are used in decreasing frequency as MS pushes people to this package that's designed to work with their server platforms. After all, if you are running a MS web server on Windows Server 2### or XP Pro, designing pages with this is "ideal", so why spend the time using/learning/running PHP/JSP/etc when you have an all in one app to integrate it all for you?

My opinion is its another attempt by MS to leverage their market share (in installed servers) to gain a bigger foothold in other areas (ie: kill PHP/JSP/etc).

-Robert

Re:Difficult? For what?

[mdhoover]

Most likely it is there to keep their current fanclub happy in an attempt to try to stop the developer bleed off to JSP/PHP/etc.

Re:Difficult? For what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe, just maybe, given a limited set of time and resources, focusing on their preferred platform and letting plug-in vendors extend their product made more economic sense.

But of course that would never happen in a company that makes and sells software for money.
It's obviously an MS conspiracy to use their (lack of) market dominance to kill PHP/JSP by not offering features that their main (market-dominant) competitor has.

Me thinks someone's hat is a bit heavy on aluminium today.
Unless the lack of integration means the product searches and deletes all your .jsp files, but I didn't find that feature mentioned in the article.

Re:Difficult? For what?

[mkiwi]

I worked this summer in an all-MS company. I left it using PHP, MySQL, and Apache.

Businesses have this "comfort" mindset that if it is MS software, it will integrate ok. They won't be 5 years down the road saying, "I wish we had done it the other way."
The company I worked for does just under $100M USD per year, so they are not especially small, but also not especially large. MS's main selling point is that a business like that can use MS products because they integrate everything together. There were fears about going onto other platforms because you might (oh my god!) have to hire an employee who knows how to run an enterprise-class software operation. This costs lots of $$ and people who can do that are few and far between.

ASP.NET was brought alone to keep developers in these mid-sized corporations from going to technoligies like JSP, servlets, etc. The problem is no one at the company wants to hire anyone who knows how to do either the open source or windows. It's a catch-22: Can't get the nice customer-integrated website because we don't know Java or C#, but we are taking an awful risk if we hire several people at 70K-120K per year to get this thing for us.

Thus Microsoft has a vast untapped user base that they are trying to persuade to businesses hire those software engineers who can write the killer apps for the company. ASP.NET was the MS answer to JSP, but what MS didn't realize when they spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing .NET that companies like the one I worked for are too small to hire a dedicated Java or C# programmer for web programming. I don't think they're trying to kill JSP- they will never succeed in doing that. Java has many advantages over C# and large corporations that run in heterogenious environments are going to choose Java.

So, with untapped user base = untapped money for MS. They saw a "hole" in their solution for businesses when JSP came out, and they are trying to plug it right now.

Re:Difficult? For what?

[bilbus]

Thats called innovating. They are supporting standards while also making new ones. By your logic we would still be using text based OSes.

Re:Difficult? For what?

[Nataku564]

Ideally, standards should be made by a Standards Group, not a singlular entity. As I am sure most people are aware - individual things (or companies) often do stupid things. It takes someone looking over your shoulder to make you do it right.

Re:Difficult? For what?

[RobertM1968]

Thats called innovating. They are supporting standards while also making new ones.

I am baffled by your post... perhaps you were really tired when you posted it. Discontinuing support of existing standards while implementing support for your "standards" only, isnt = innovation.

And innovation isnt = supporting standards while making new ones.

And making new standards isnt necessarily innovation - and usually in MS's case, far from it - it's usually (in their case) copying someone else's ideas for their own proprietary implementation.

No matter how I read it, I cannot make any sense of your reply to my post.

By your logic we would still be using text based OSes.

This part I dont understand either. But as it is based on the rest, maybe that's why.

-Robert

So In Other Words

[colonslashslash]

Designer currently only supports ASP.NET. Microsoft built the ASP.NET platform...

So in other words, it's completely useless to many of us web developers, and isn't directly comparable with Dreamweaver? Thought so.

Re:So In Other Words

[YrWrstNtmr]

So in other words, it's completely useless to many of us web developers, and isn't directly comparable with Dreamweaver?

Or, in other other words, it's another tool to put in your kit, that may be useful if you ever have to build or maintain an asp.net site.

Re:So In Other Words

[colonslashslash]

Duplicating functionality that is already in Dreamweaver at the expense of an additonal license fee? What's the point?

Seems like this would be akin to having Adobe Swiss Army Knife and then going out and paying for Microsoft © Spork © ® XP © Pro Corporate Ultimate Extended EULA Edition. ;)

Re:So In Other Words

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just another example of Microsoft putting themselves ahead of potential customers---or even existing customers---in another lame attempt to lock-in absolutely everybody with more shitty software and "MS standards".

Do they believe that all of the people creating 'My Very First Webpage!'-type websites with FrontPage will be the PHP developers of tomorrow...people that MS hope to corral now?

Pro devs ignored FrontPage, quite rightly, and pro devs will continue to ignore MS web code-mangling products.

My only fear is that professionals will gradually be replaced by faux-pros, brought up on shit like FrontPage and Expression...that would not auger well for website development as a whole.

Unless of course you like OMGPONIEZ!!!!!!!11 YouTube blogs, in which case you'll think it's a great idea.

Re:So In Other Words

[Dadoo]

What's the point?

The point is to make more money for Microsoft by allowing them to expand into another market. Watch: in a year or two, there'll be DreamWeaver/Expression wars all over the place, much like Linux/Windows wars, today. A year or two after that, DreamWeaver will be gone.

I've said it before and I'll sat it again. I can't understand why people still develop software for Windows. People who do will have one of two futures: either Microsoft will buy them, or Microsoft will come out with a competing product and put them out of business. It's just crazy.

Re:So In Other Words

[SoSueMe]

Or, in still other words, you bow (kneel & bob) to MS or Adobe.
Either way, you are going to lock yourself into proprietary, hard to make compliant, hard to make accessible, formats.

Sweet!
I'm all over that!

Yes, I know it can be done, but how many drag-and-drop designers are going to git a shit about learning how to do it well.

I liken it to getting laid for the first time: you really didn't know what you were doing, or how to do it well, but damn, it felt good.

Re:So In Other Words

[Threni]

> I can't understand why people still develop software for Windows. People who do will have one of
> two futures: either Microsoft will buy them, or Microsoft will come out with a competing product
> and put them out of business. It's just crazy.

I get paid to develop software for Windows. I do this because ~everyone uses Windows. There are millions of applications out there, and probably tens of thousands of companies creating them; there's only a tiny chance that a fraction of those will be bought by or competed against by Microsoft. You simply don't know what you're talking about.

Re:So In Other Words

[Firehed]

I think you just said why people develop for Windows - MS will buy them. Which means you get a nice fat payoff for your work. There are plenty of startups who are doing nothing but HOPING to be bought out by a larger, richer company. Though when it comes to web stuff, I don't know if the normal rules will apply - I do all my webdev work in a text editor with syntax highlighting, and nothing more. I'd rather have written the actual code so I can fix it or do it effeciently, rather than have something generate it for me and I learn nothing in the process and know that the code could well suck. At this point, I'm just waiting for Google to create a free alternative to the both of them that'll be basically web-platform-independant (or, rather, you tell it the platform, it spits out the appropriate code, less bound).

Re:So In Other Words

[Dadoo]

there's only a tiny chance that a fraction of those will be bought by or competed against by Microsoft.

I would argue that those products don't have a huge amount of value. I'm sure Microsoft will go from the largest targets to the smallest, so those will be last on the hit list.

Some of those companies will be put out of business indirectly - Microsoft will (probably not even deliberately) add something to Windows that will make the smaller company's product irrelevant, much like they did with Novell Netware, but on a smaller scale. How many companies that produced graphics libraries were put out of business, when Microsoft came out with Windows?

Even if Microsoft isn't targeting your market now, if and when they do decide to target it, you're done. Is that really a secure enough model to pin your business on?

Make your money while you can...

Re:So In Other Words

[Dadoo]

There are plenty of startups who are doing nothing but HOPING to be bought out by a larger, richer company.

I'm sure that's true and, if they are successful at it, more power to them. However, that's a pretty risky model on which to base your business, isn't it? After all, it's not really not up to you, the smaller business owner. If you start negotiating and your price is too high, or your product isn't quite ready, or the buyer is just in a bad mood that day, the deal could fall through, and the larger company will go elsewhere.

Re:So In Other Words

[mblase]

So in other words, it's completely useless to many of us web developers, and isn't directly comparable with Dreamweaver? Thought so.

I've stopped being surprised at how little most intranet managers care about this. When a company's web server is using Microsoft servers anyway, and you don't have a choice about that, why shouldn't you use Microsoft's development software?

What's that you say? You have more experience with Dreamweaver, and you're already comfortable with that? Hmm. Too bad your employer doesn't have any copies of Dreamweaver in-house and they've already paid for Microsoft's dev software instead. Guess you'd better read up, or find another consulting position.

Re:So In Other Words

[Firehed]

You just received an 'A' in Entrepreneurship 101. Assess your risks all you want, but in the end it's still a risk.

ASP.NET ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it... The summary is taken verbatim from the article, and the article leaves much to be desired.

What does the successor of Frontpage have to do with ASP.NET? I don't see a single thing in the screenshots that point to the connection.

Re:ASP.NET ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be primarily there to givbe the good people of Slashdot a reason the slag it off without thinking about it too much.

Other browsers?

[debilo]

"Walking the web standards walk" sounds nice at first, but Microsoft has a history of creating rather varying definitions of standard compliance that often didn't relate to web designers' own experiences. I skimmed the article, but didn't see a comparison of how well the code is supported in non-IE browsers.

Re:Other browsers?

[SoSueMe]

The code will be as good as the support in their browser. See how this stacks up in a Browser comparison

Re:Other browsers?

[nine-times]

Well, the irony of course is that if they do "walk the web standards walk", then their web-design package will make pages that don't display properly in their web browser.

Re:Other browsers?

[cbhacking]

I write ASP.NET at work. Last year, using Visual Studio 2003 (.NET 1.1) I had to put in explicit checks for Firefox, and tell it to use the highest level of standards compliance available, or the pages looked like shit. We use Visual Studio 2005 now (which includes Visual Web Dev, and uses .NET 2.0, same as Expression), and I have found that it works beatifully in Firefox without any work-arounds. Yes, it even occasionally breaks IE6. The really funny thing was writing a page that rendered correctly in Firefox 1.5, but incorrectly (and almost identically) in IE6 and... Opera 9. Dead serious. I checked, and all three were using identical source. I ran it through W3C validation and it passed (DTD XHTML Transitional).

Of course, all this would have been even funnier if it hadn't required changing so much code, going over deadline, etc. To this day I'm not sure what was broken; it had something to do with multiple tables being declared adjacently. The only way to fix it was make the whole thing one big table; an interesting task as the "blocks" that had to be inserted in table rows came in several different flavors.

Standards accepted, standard development tools, no

[notnAP]

The Expression Web Designer application walks the Web standards walk. One caution: Web Designer currently only supports ASP.NET.

The same attitude that leads MS to believe they can ignore standards (essentially, writing their own) is what leads them to believe they can ignore other "standard" practices, like using a variety of tools, platforms, and development schemes.

In other news, Microsoft has decided to start releasing to the world "air," which will be an alternative to whatever it is you are presently inhaling. MSAir will not contain any oxygen, so it may not be of much use to some users.

Designers won't touch Expression

[DarkManaX]

From my experience most designers who do web stuff wouldn't get near Expression; alot of that having to do with Macs being prominent in the design field. Not to mention MS's blatent disregard for standards, as mentioned many times here already.

Re:Designers won't touch Expression

[daeg]

.NET 2.0 and 3.0 can fully support standards, actually. I believe the final releases of 3.0 will enable standards by default rather than require the programmer to enable them.

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons why ASP.NET sucks. Namely the horrid support for non-JS-enabled browsers, cookie requirement even for the simplest of forms, etc...

Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE Fix

[Soong]

If M$ really wants to walk the standards walk, fix Internet Exploder already. I hate it when I design my website to work fine with Firefox and Safari and some IE user comes along and it doesn't work.

Huh?

[93 Escort Wagon]

"The Expression Web Designer application walks the Web standards walk. One caution: Web Designer currently only supports ASP.NET."

Aren't these two statements sort of, you know, contradictory?

Look, I know it's de rigeur for us to trash Microsoft and talk about "MS Fanboys" and all that - but even just reading this summary, it's obvious that 1) MS really HASN'T drank the Koolaid; and 2) This really isn't a professional tool by anyone's standards except some fanboys who don't know any better. It's just a repackaging of FrontPage - they're prettied it up and maybe added a few meaningless tweaks.

What's the old saying... you can put lipstick on a pig, but in the end it's still a pig.

Re:Huh?

[Aphrika]

They're not as contradictory as it first appears really.

Web standards pretty much determine the markup output server-side and how that markup is rendered in the browser. ASP.NET 2.0 is a server-side technology that outputs XHTML compliant code that will work in any browser - no ASP.NET stuff ever gets near the browser.

In that respect, ASP.NET is as web standards compliant as any other server-side technology - PHP, JSP, anything - it's virtually irrelevant to what gets output and arrives at the browser.

However, you're right in that Expression looks and feels half-baked. Visual Studio.NET is just fine for putting together 'professional' ASP.NET stuff, so why you'd want to release a product that overlaps is beyond me, especially when pages adhering to web standards can be put together in notepad if you know what you're doing (which from experience a lot of web designers don't).

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Expression Web Designer application walks the Web standards walk. One caution: Web Designer currently only supports ASP.NET."

Aren't these two statements sort of, you know, contradictory?

Not really. If they're talking about client-side standards --not integration between serverside and clientside code. You can create completely standards compliant code with VS2005 (that's Visual Studio 2005, an M$ product) or Notepad --it's all up to the coder. If you don't know how to use M$ tools, it isn't entirely Bill's fault. Just because a lot of their tools make development tasks easier is no reason to believe that EVERYBODY using them is a moron.

Anyway, I wouldn't lose any sleep over Expression Web Designer. It will (obviously) only be used by M$ shops heavily invested in ASP.Net. The infection (as it's thought of by the faithful in the church of OSS) will be contained.


(please mod -666 "work of the anti-christ")

Re:Huh?

[BRSQUIRRL]

Good grief, have any of the commenters here actually USED ASP.NET 2.0? Or are you just basing your statements on some half-true rant you read three years ago in a PHP forum somewhere? ASP.NET 2.0 actually does a pretty good job of rendering standards-compliant XHTML to the client browser. In fact, the only required piece of the ASP.NET toolchain that is made by Microsoft is IIS. I can use any page/code editor to build a site and any (current) browser to view them. Before someone objects...yes, it is possible to build horribly noncompliant pages in ASP.NET (just as it is in PHP), and yes, it is much easier to do some ASP.NET tasks in Visual Studio, but...come on people.

And when they say that "Web Designer currently only supports ASP.NET", they only mean that if you want to do some kind of server-side development using Expression, it is going to be ASP.NET. You are perfectly free to develop XHTML/CSS/JavaScript to your heart's content. But what's that? Microsoft didn't include PHP/JSP/Rails support? Oh, nevermind. It's a toy for "fanboys". Sheesh.

Re:Huh?

[nhavar]

DING DING DING... give the man a prize for... "a lot of web designers don't." There's a difference between web designers and web developers in a quite a few of the people I've met. Some call themselves web developers and yet rely very heavily on the tools to do all of the work for them. Not in one of those "work smarter not harder" ways, but in the "what's wrong with the font tag" way. They're really designers. Most of the time they might as well be using Photoshop or Illustrator to mockup the site and then hand it off to a web developer to figure out the code. Of course, I've also met my share of dipshits in that camp too. They're too eager to use buzzword-de-jour and end up relying on Sun/Oracle/IBM's tooling and create double the amount of work for themselves.

MS knows that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to fork over good money for a tool that is just adequate so that they can output content, applications, documents, etc., that is just adequate. That's where the real money is. It's not in producing the best product or service it's about appealing to the mass audience of neophites and apathetic designer/developers.

Re:Huh?

[CodeBuster]

Visual Studio.NET is just fine for putting together 'professional' ASP.NET stuff, so why you'd want to release a product that overlaps is beyond me

I do production development with Visual Studio and ASP.NET 2.0 and I agree with this sentiment completely. The professional ASP.NET developers are 99% likely to be using Visual Studio anyway so why not further enhance the Visual Studio product by adding the additional web development functionality as an optional download? The people who just want to 'do a web page' are not going to pick up server side scripting and database driven web applications on a lark, so they can leave those people with the FrontPage product and fold the professional stuff into their professional tools. Expression seems more like a solution looking for a problem between two camps with very different needs or perhaps a first stab at competing with Dreamweaver and the like, because hey I can admit it...Visual Studio is not the best tool out there for CSS, Layout, and design with XHTML, JavaScript, etc. It does an adequate job, but some optional enhancements, at the risk of further enlarging the scope of what is already a massive piece of software, would probably be welcome.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think liberal amounts of anti-microsoft kool aid are being swigged here, along with large amounts of Teh Stupid.

Re:Huh?

[DannyO152]

Haven't used ASP.NET. I've been doing some small apps and web apps on non-Microsoft platforms in a platform agnostic way; call me crazy.

I do think you miss a point. If ASP, or JSP for that matter, had been all that why would there be PHP and MySQL and Ruby solutions? I think my question circles back to "right tool for the job" territory, which I accept as an appropriate comment whenever someone flames someone else for choosing a Microsoft tool.

Wasn't there a problem a few years ago about people who were running mySql on Windows servers with poor configurations; if WAMP doesn't really happen why was it a problem? I know Microsoft basically grooves everything so it works pretty well if you license the entire tool stack and, the fact is, a significant number of their customers mix in tools that are functional, well-understood, well-known, and not Microsoft-originated and generally to avoid licensing costs. Microsoft's response: la la la, we can't hear you and you don't exist. It's their choice, but to my ears, this drowns out the "we want to interoperate" market-speak and I think it's tone-deaf and short-sighted, but I don't own shares so, hey.

Re:Huh?

[cbhacking]

WHAT?!? I have no idea how this reached +5, but... you clearly haven't done both Frontpage and ASP.NET. Frontpage's idea of machine-generated code is immense, unreadable blocks of JavaScript to do things like make buttons change color on mouseover. ASP.NET is all about dynamic pages; on static pages, it does fairly except try to dumb down the code for outdated browsers. Whether dumbed down or not, it is remarkably elegant for auto-generated code. I haven't used Expressions enough to give you a full list of the ways it differs from Frontpage, but it supports all browsers that I've tried it on.

.NET 1.1 wouldn't recognize many browesrs outside the IE family (and some old Netscape versions) so you had to explicitly tell it Firefox, etc. were modern browsers. .NET 2.0 (used by Expressions) has excellent support for standards-compliant code and auto-detects most browsers; I have yet to see it render incorrectly in Firefox, or disasterously fail W3C Validation (at least, the versions it sends Opera usually pass, or have one trivial error that renders correctly even in Standards mode anyhow). For that matter, since it actually uses DTDs, it's already well ahead of Frontpage.

Re:Huh?

[man_of_mr_e]

Here's what you're missing:

Most of the time, Developers are happy to create a crappy looking, but highly functional web page for their application. Visual Studio has pretty poor HTML Designer support anyways. What will happen, more often than not, is that the developer will create the application and then he'll hand it off to a web designer that will make it look pretty. Expression is designed for the Web Designers to play around with the ASP front-end code without needing to use Visual Studio (which they wouldn't understand most of the time anyways and be frustrated with).

Re:Huh?

[ThePengwin]

MS hasn't drank the Koolaid because you have to be cool to do that.

Re:Huh?

[*SECADM]

you actually don't even need IIS to use asp.net i believe. there has been a asp.net module for apache for a long time. check out http://www.apache-asp.org/

What I would like to know is...

[Eric Damron]

...how clean is the code from Microsoft's product. I've used both FrontPage and Dreamweaver and I can tell you that most of the time Dreamweaver produces some pretty clean HTML etc. Frontpage not so much.

If the code is clean enough I could run it on my Linux Apache server using mono.

Better not hold my breath...

Re:What I would like to know is...

[Aerdan]

Dreamweaver does not emit 'clean' code. It's still more cluttered and not as logically presented as hand-written code.

Re:What I would like to know is...

[NMerriam]

Dreamweaver does not emit 'clean' code. It's still more cluttered and not as logically presented as hand-written code.

DW creates perfectly clean code, as long as you learn how to use it correctly. It's a professional tool, not a point-and-click application (or rather, it will create functional code if you treat it as a point-and-click, but you'll be producing messier code than you should).

In my near decade of using DW (and homesite and BBedit and notepad and emacs and vi and pico and nano and nvu and Notetab and frontpage and Zend Studio and Coldfusion studio, etc), I've rarely seen the program generate inherently bad/messy code, but I've seen plenty of users who don't know how to operate it correctly blame the program for their bad/messy code. I'd say 90% of bad DW HTML comes from users working in design view and not using the tag selector at the bottom of the document window. The program can fix a lot of overlapping/nesting tag issues automatically, but people making bad manual selections before applying attributes and then complaining that the code has too many tags is pretty asinine. Dreamweaver is not psychic, it can't know what selection you *meant* if you don't make it properly, and it gives you several tools to make them properly.

You can, of course just use it in code view as an HTML text editor with code completion, an extensive built-in code reference and library, and reusable objects. The it's totally up to you how cluttered and logical the code is. You can also customize the HTML/XML/JS that operates the whole program so that it uses your particular coding style, your particular line break methods, and your particular syntax choices, etc. There's nothing code-related in the program that can't be changed to your particular style. You may as well complain that emacs doesn't come out of the box with your particular coding style set by default.

Re:What I would like to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The examples I saw at PDC '05 generated some pretty damn clean looking XHTML-strict code. That was my biggest complaint about Frontpage, it's code generation sucked ass. I was impressed with the code generated from Expression enough to clap and give a great big "God, Thank You!".

Peh.

[jez9999]

Who needs Expression? I have a text editor.

Re:Peh.

[Watson Ladd]

I have emacs.

Re:Peh.

[AmberBlackCat]

People who don't like to waste time typing all that shit out by hand just to prove they can.

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[KarmaMB84]

I'm all for standards, but are you saying you don't check to see if your site works with the #1 web browser?

Kool-aid?

[fm6]

Microsoft finally drank the Kool-Aid.

Why is "drink the Kool-Aid" such a popular expression for "leap of faith"? Isn't anybody put off the orgin of the phrase?

Re:Kool-aid?

[Dever]

i wish they actually would drink the 'Kool-Aid'

Re:Kool-aid?

[iminplaya]

You mean it wasn't Ken Kesey? Bummer, man.

Re:Kool-aid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimme another Guyana Punch, please. Oh yeah!

Re:Kool-aid?

[rduke15]

Why is "drink the Kool-Aid" such a popular expression for "leap of faith"? Isn't anybody put off the orgin of the phrase?

I didn't know the connection betwen "Kool-Aid" and that massacre. For me, it always reminds me of the much older "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". Definitely NOT something that would put me off.

Re:Kool-aid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was initiall about the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and accepting the culture... then those folks in Jonestown screwed it all up. I wasn't aware of the Jonestown stuff before. It appears "don't drink the Kool-Aid" may be more about not following blindly, while "drunk the kool-aid" is more an act of acceptance.

Re:Kool-aid?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO this is a misuse of the phrase, unless the author considers using web standards to be a bad thing. "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is buying into a dubious cult. If it looks like a good idea from the outside, it's not kool aid.

Re:Kool-aid?

[ElephanTS]

Jeez - I didn't know that.

According to "The Truth About Jonestown" by Sheila Yohnk (see external links), on November 18, 1978, a large vat of grape-flavored Flavor Aid was prepared; the brew included potassium cyanide, Valium, Penegram, and chloral hydrate.

I always thought it was the Grateful Dead/LSD thing. Still, if MS drank the fruity potassium cyanide solution a lot of people would be in favor of that too.

Re:Kool-aid?

[fm6]

I'm beginning to think that most people don't know about the association with Jonestown. Which goes a long way to explaining why the expression is so popular. Still doesn't explain how people who do know about the connection (and there seem to be a lot of them) using mass suicide as a positive metaphor.

Re:Kool-aid?

[cduffy]

I've known the background for as long as I can recall -- but never considered it a positive metaphor.

One who drinks the kool-aid is acting in a manner desired by those who would manipulate them, contrary to the good sense they might have were they not in a situation where they're prone to such manipulation. One who works at a start-up and puts in insane hours with no additional compensation has drank the kool-aid. One who works at a massive corporation with a particular variety of groupthink and who accepts that groupthink drinks the kool-aid. (I recall one individual opening a speech with an assertion that "I work at Microsoft, but I don't drink the kool-aid"; it was, in this case, regarding the latter usage).

The assertion made in the article, by its use of drinking the kool-aid with regard to accepting standards as a Good Thing, claims that Microsoft has come around to the point of accepting standards even when doing so is not necessarily in their best interests, or that standards-compliance has become part of the local groupthink. Frankly, I'd be happy if this were so -- but in the present case, there's no reason to believe it's anything other than exaggeration on the part of the author.

Re:Kool-aid?

[brouski]

What's more interesting is that the drink in Jonestown wasn't even "Kool-Aid". It was Flavorade.

Re:Kool-aid?

[fm6]

And you know this to be true because....?

Re:Kool-aid?

[Reaperducer]

I'm beginning to think that most people don't know about the association with Jonestown. Which goes a long way to explaining why the expression is so popular. Still doesn't explain how people who do know about the connection (and there seem to be a lot of them) using mass suicide as a positive metaphor.

It's not meant to be positive. It's meant to illustrate blind, illogical, destructive faith. The fact that you don't know many people who understand its origin does not mean that "most" people don't know about Jonestown; just that the people you know don't know it.

To use your own logic, I asked around at work today and "most" of the people I work with know its real origin and meaning. They're also able to use it correctly and not just repeat phrases they hear other people use because they think it makes them sound cool.

Re:Kool-aid?

[fm6]

It's not meant to be positive. It's meant to illustrate blind, illogical, destructive faith.

Nonsense. I can cite a million contrary examples including the article we're talking about.

Re:Kool-aid?

[cduffy]

Finding a million examples of folks misusing any common phrase is not difficult. It doesn't make them right, either.

The top results from a quick Google search back up the description of drinking the kool-aid as an act of self-destructive or blind faith:

http://www.wordspy.com/words/drinktheKool-Aid.asp
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/92/debunk.html
http://www.wordorigins.org/Words/LetterD/drinkkool aid.html
Also, see the "Hacker Slang" section of the page at http://www.answers.com/topic/kool-aid

The only dissenting explanation is far more pithy, and evidences less research:
http://www.clichesite.com/content.asp?which=tip+19 48

Re:Kool-aid?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/jonestown1.html

"Jones's 912 followers were given a deadly concoction of purple Kool-Aid..."

Wrong; it was Flavor Aid:

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

According to "The Truth About Jonestown" by Sheila Yohnk, on November 18, 1978, a large vat of grape-flavored Flavor Aid was prepared; the brew included potassium cyanide, Valium, Penegram, and chloral hydrate.

Popular culture references

* The phrase drink the Kool-Aid, meaning "to become a firm believer in something; to accept an argument or philosophy wholeheartedly or blindly",[12] is a product of the Jonestown massacre, despite the fact that the beverage consumed by the Jonestowners was actually Flavor Aid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_Aid
Around 913 followers of Jim Jones committed cult suicide by drinking cyanide-laced grape Flavor Aid in 1978.

For more see:

http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/2006/01/language-v irus-oh-yeahhh-oh-nooooo_20.html

Re:Kool-aid?

[rdebath]

I don't think I like "leap of faith" any better, "splat" seems a lot more messy.

Re:neither works

[Fyre2012]

Though you're clearly trolling, the lack of a linux 'equivilant' to Dreamweaver is the only reason I still dual boot.

Sure some prorgams compare, but at this stage Dreamweaver, IMO, is top shelf. Here's hoping /. will prove me otherwise =)

Too little, too late

[v3xt0r]

It's not a drawback for developers, it's a limitation for Microsoft.

Why would any (sane) web application developer want to pay for and use a windows-only IDE, when you can develop on a free operating system, with free software, and do (virtually) anything you want with the source code??

As a perl/php web application developer, and someone who sometimes helps HR interview/test candidates to see where their technical skills and abilities are... I wouldn't recommend hiring someone who only uses IDE's such as dreamweaver, simply because they generally lack programming and software-design skills.

I might recommend them for a Web 'Designer' position, as they may be great at making graphical interfaces, but Web (GUI) Designers should not be confused with Web Application Developers, and in an assembly-line process they should never be exposed to the server-side source code.

Another drawback of using IDEs such as Dreamweaver in an assembly-line web application development environment, is that there is always a poor soul who has to clean-up all the nasty WYSIWYG-generated HTML code from the IDE. This is can sometimes be a huge set-back for resources and time allocation.

It's simply counter-productive.

Since most Web Designers who use IDEs only view from the 'Design' view, they generally don't realize how much sloppy code is being generated, or how to clean it up. (not all, but the majority of the mass)

Re:Too little, too late

[juiceCake]

Another drawback of using IDEs such as Dreamweaver in an assembly-line web application development environment, is that there is always a poor soul who has to clean-up all the nasty WYSIWYG-generated HTML code from the IDE. This is can sometimes be a huge set-back for resources and time allocation.

Anyone who has ever used Dreamweaver, and who uses the Code View knows that the code is clean and you have control over how it is generated. That's the great thing about Dreamweaver, it's great for code-heads and it's great for those who are not.

Since most Web Designers who use IDEs only view from the 'Design' view, they generally don't realize how much sloppy code is being generated, or how to clean it up.

Since when does Dreamweaver develop a lot of sloppy XHTML code that has to be cleaned up?

Re:Too little, too late

[Lego-Lad]

Dreamweaver doesn't create sloppy code any longer. Adobe.Macromedia has done a great job of improving Dreamweaver, including CSS support. One can create strict or transitional xhtml right in the code view - no more garbage is inserted. A lot of the JS snippets haven't changed, but if you do that, you probably have your own library already developed. DW is a tool for rapid application development. It's faster than hand coding, and produces excellent code when used correctly. This wasn't always the case, but to be fair, DW8 is excellent.

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would any (sane) web application developer want to pay for and use a windows-only IDE, when you can develop on a free operating system, with free software, and do (virtually) anything you want with the source code??

Allow me to answer (anonymously so I can keep my account):
Because my company pays for it and I can be phenomenally productive with almost no time spent on research (did I mention I'm lazy?). Visual Studio is one of the few things M$ deserves kudos for --at least if productivity is a factor. The IDE practically writes the code for you.

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to ask a naive question.

What is the side effect of the "sloppy" code output by dreamweaver or other WYSIWYG editors? I understand that this means that the code is ugly and not very readable maybe, but if you design your site and the output looks right in your target browsers, why would you "theoretically" care if the code is sloppy? If you are using a WYSIWYG editor exclusively and the site works, what effect does sloppy code really have on creting a finished, working product?

Just curious, as someone who would likely to need a WYSIWYG tool.

Re:Too little, too late

[v3xt0r]

The most common sloppy coding issue that people using dreamweaver's 'design mode' (only) create, is the font tag. Sometimes it nests multiple font tags that can grow rather large in bytes, and introduce bandwidth and storage overhead, and overall sloppy HTML.

I've seen a LOT of web/graphic designers (non-html programmer types) do this, and I refuse to clean-up their code, or work with it even. It's more of an issue w/ inexperienced dw users, and mainly applied to older versions of dw.

Although I do agree that dw is a great app for what it is, don't get me wrong, I just think people (including those replied to my comment) need to understand the difference between Web Page Development, and Web Application Development, and how it differs in an (assembly line) developmemt environment (not 1-man shops).

Re:Too little, too late

[sushibot]

Yeah, well I've seen a LOT of poor Perl/PHP code. Hand coding is far more conducive to producing sloppy code than GUI's like Dreamweaver and Visual Studio. There are better technologies out there, v3x0r, stop hanging on--you may be surprised at how fast you can code when you don't hit the browser refresh button every ten seconds.

I do understand where you are coming from as I've had many people like yourself work for me over the years. They always think hand coding is the only way, mostly because that's all they know. "Those so-called web designers/developers just drag-and-drop and then I have to go clean up their code." Blah, blah, blah. Heard it many times. Once we require them to use Visual Studio, after a few days they absolutely love it, especially some of the features like context-sensitive help and powerful debugging. "Dude, this is cool, I can actually step into the SQL Stored Procedure!" This is what I've been trying to tell you, ya ding-dong.

Seriously, dude, you are limiting yourself.

Now, I am not saying this is end all. We do a lot of Interwoven stuff where Perl/CGI is required, and others where Python, for instance, is required (I do like Python), but it's always a pleasure to get back into the IDE.

Re:Too little, too late

[juiceCake]

The most common sloppy coding issue that people using dreamweaver's 'design mode' (only) create, is the font tag. Sometimes it nests multiple font tags that can grow rather large in bytes, and introduce bandwidth and storage overhead, and overall sloppy HTML.

Just turn off the use of the font tag. You have to actually force it to use a font tag these days, and have for at least the last two versions.

Evolution

[jrmiller84]

If Frontpage was any hint of things to come, I'll pass. When I was in HS (computer tech. academy) that's what we used because they couldn't afford licenses of Dreamweaver. Once I used Dreamweaver I swore I would never go back. I don't understand why they would only allow it to support ASP.Net. Or maybe I can ($$$). I personally can't stand programming in ASP. I've always hated it. When I was asked to design our corporate intranet I immediately jumped to PHP with a MySql backend even when ASP.net and SQL [Express] were openly available to me just to stay away from ASP. Perhaps I'm bias but come on... Developers aren't going to limit theirselves to one language when they can buy another suite that will allow them to use a gamut of languages and database engines together for most likely an equal price. I would rather use Notepad.

Re:Evolution

[amliebsch]

ASP and ASP.NET are not very similar. I wouldn't judge one on the basis of the other.

Re:Evolution

[LordLucless]

ASP.NET is a significant change from ASP - they're in two completely different classes. I develop in PHP, Java and ASP.NET, and in tems purely of language, ASP.NET is the way to go, in my opinion. Of course, the problem with ASP.NET is that you really have to run it in a Windows/ISS environment, which has headaches all of its own. If ever there's a time when ASP.NET is well supported for production under apache, I'd use it for anything remotely complex.

Re:Evolution

[Screwy1138]

Comparing ASP.Net to ASP is like comparing Java to JavaScript.

Re:Evolution

[cbhacking]

The Mono Project (open-source .NET, works on most operating systems) can use ASP.NET pages. You can either use a plug-in for Apache, or XPS, a "lightweight and simple webserver written in C#."

Re:Evolution

[LordLucless]

Last time I checked on that, the plugin for Apache was still heavily under development and not recommended for production use. Not sure if its changed since then

Check out MICROSOFT's wrongdoing

[applix7]

Microsoft is hard core. http://malfy.org/

Opposite meaning of "drinking the Kool-Aid"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought "drinking the Kool-Aid" meant that you have blind faith in an irrational mindset, like committing mass suicide. For Microsoft to become aware of the real world around them, they would have to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[JackieBrown]

I wish more people wouldn't. What better way to force MS to start complying with standards?

Then we can start seeing sites that say to IE users that their browser is not supported (not that I am bitter.)

It's about what, no how

[fm6]

Where's the contradiction? ASP is just a server-side scripting language. W3C specifications describe what the HTML and CSS is supposed to look like once it reaches the brower. It would be absurd for them to specify where that markup comes from!

Re:It's about what, no how

[SoSueMe]

The contradiction lies in the defaults of VS 200#.Net.
When the default in your IDE is to client side scripting, you are no longer in a true ASP environment. In fact, any concessions to accessibility in VS 2003 were only implemented in SP1. They were also disabled by default.
The IDE itself is not usable by programmers with disabilities. MS has chosen to leave making the program accessible to "third parties".

GIGO-Garbage In Garbage Out.

Re:It's about what, no how

[Lego-Lad]

.NET does a strange thing where you can do mark up, style DIV tags, etc. but it will render things differently than you intended depending on the browser making the call. You have to go into IIS and change this...so, using ASP.NET, though it's server-side, does actually impact standards.

Perhaps this tool will fix this...I've used ASP and PHP professionally for years now and the only time I'll use a .NET solution is when I'm forced to do so. I do not see Expressions as a DreamWeaver killer, anymore than Sparkle is a Flash killer.

Re:It's about what, no how

[Anonymous Coward]

.NET does a strange thing where you can do mark up, style DIV tags, etc. but it will render things differently than you intended depending on the browser making the call. You have to go into IIS and change this...so, using ASP.NET, though it's server-side, does actually impact standards

That's if you use all the whiz-bang ASP.Net toolbox goodies. If you continue using standard HTML in VS2005 it renders exactly as you typed it. No disrespect, but if you're modifying IIS to fix your misuse of ASP.NET, you're really going about this the wrong way.

Like Java, C++, a particle accelerator, or any other complex technology, if you don't know the strengths and limitations of the tools you're using, you're going to have to depend on luck to get the results you want. If you're not comfortable with it, avoid it.

Re:It's about what, no how

[Lego-Lad]

Truth...we are using the wizbang toolbox things. Well said.

Re:It's about what, no how

[fm6]

And if we were talking about visual studio you'd have a point. RTFA is bad enough, but you didn't even read the fucking headline!

Re:It's about what, no how

[fm6]

That's idiotic. Because some of the .NET API doesn't work the way you think it should, no program that uses .NET can be w3c compliant?

Re:It's about what, no how

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone say that, you fucking retard?

No php or cf support no expression engine for me

[jeffgtr]

I don't see why I'd even want to try this if your stuck with asp.net As many headaches as IE has caused me and countless others I will avoid this like the plague on principal only let alone that I seldom have a need for asp.net I'll stick with DW and BBedit and when I have to be on my windows machine at work DW and Editpad

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[Khuffie]

And users would just say "Fuck you" to said site and move on to the next one. I know I do when a site tells me to bugger off because I'm using Opera.

Uh, oh...

[__aaclcg7560]

Microsoft seems to be lost in the web design field. Can someone hand them a LAMP and a good text editor so they can find their way?

Long Time Dreamweaver User - Impressed

[Anamanaman]

As a long time dreamweaver user (Since 4.0), I tried Expression web designer last week and really like it. The interface is better laid out than Dreamweaver and it has a really great HTML View (where I spend most of my time). The css support is also top notch.

ASP.NET really has nothing to do with this editor. Its focused on HTML and CSS. If you are an ASP.NET developer, it will let you drop in server controls and thats about. You'd be crazy to use this instead of Visual Studio.NET for real coding. This is purely an HTML editor.

All developers (including PHP/JSP) can use this to build their HTML comps before making the site dynamic. Once it stabalizes it will definately give Dreamweaver a run for its money.

Re:Long Time Dreamweaver User - Impressed

[FyRE666]

All developers (including PHP/JSP) can use this to build their HTML comps before making the site dynamic.

Yeah, because obviously the syntax hilighting will be fantastic with an MS app that only understands VB/C#... Makes me wonder what sort of bastardised CSS this thing generates to support MS' horrendous line of web browsers. I'm guessing it'll actually generate IE specific CSS, and render badly on anything else, as per MS standard operating practice.

Unless you have "Owned by Microsoft" stamped on your ass, I don't see why anyone would choose this garbage over Dreamweaver (disclaimer: I use DW in code view only, so can't vouch for its design abilities).

Re:Long Time Dreamweaver User - Impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because obviously the syntax hilighting will be fantastic with an MS app that only understands VB/C#...

Read the comment: "ASP.NET really has nothing to do with this editor. Its focused on HTML and CSS."

Expression has NOTHING to do with server-side code. As the parent says, it will only allow you to insert a couple of server control placeholders.

No. Code. Whatsoever.

It's an HTML editor that's a successor of Frontpage.

Makes me wonder what sort of bastardised CSS this thing generates to support MS' horrendous line of web browsers. I'm guessing it'll actually generate IE specific CSS, and render badly on anything else, as per MS standard operating practice.

It does not, and it will not. Why don't you try it?

Unless you have "Owned by Microsoft" stamped on your ass, I don't see why anyone would choose this garbage over Dreamweaver (disclaimer: I use DW in code view only, so can't vouch for its design abilities).

ROTFL. You're using $200 software as a simple text editor, while there are free/libre alternatives? Yeah, right. And Expression, which can also be used in code view, is garbage?

You are teh funnay.

Re:Long Time Dreamweaver User - Impressed

[cbhacking]

You REALLY didn't read the parent post, did you?

Parent is talking about using Expression suite for HTML/CSS editing. As with frontPage, it isn't intended to write dynamic pages. Unlike FrontPage, you CAN write dynamic pages with it, but the primary purpose is for creating and editing static pages. This doesn't involve any C#, VB.NET, or any other functional language except JavaScript. If you want to add tags for other active server languages, you can probably do that just fine, then use Eclipse or Vim or your favorite other editor to write your server code (complete with syntax highlighting).

Speaking of highlighting, there is far more that that to Expression. You can select a DOCTYPE, and it will offer the tags, properties, etc. that are supported. If you enter deprecated tags/parameters, or use elements outside the current doctype, it warns you. Basically, it can validate your web page as you write it. It also has autocompletion, etc. It will help build stylesheets, or inline style parameters, and they are even (oh shock and horror) W3C compliant. (I tested them, both using Opera and Firefox, and by submitting for W3C Validation online using Markup Validation and CSS Validation). I don't know if it has any CSS3 support, and I highly doubt it covers all of CSS2, but it isn't *only* IE6 compliant... although it does some IE6 workarounds for you, which makes web programming more convenient, at least.

Re:Long Time Dreamweaver User - Impressed

[FyRE666]

Unless you have "Owned by Microsoft" stamped on your ass, I don't see why anyone would choose this garbage over Dreamweaver (disclaimer: I use DW in code view only, so can't vouch for its design abilities).

ROTFL. You're using $200 software as a simple text editor, while there are free/libre alternatives? Yeah, right. And Expression, which can also be used in code view, is garbage?


If you really think that using DW in code view is the same as using a simple text editor, you've obviously never used it. Think: site managment tools. Anyway, you're just an AC, so your opinion is pretty worthless anyway...

Re:Long Time Dreamweaver User - Impressed

[FyRE666]

If you want to add tags for other active server languages, you can probably do that just fine, then use Eclipse or Vim or your favorite other editor to write your server code (complete with syntax highlighting).

Yeah that's great! I can ditch DW and just swap back and forth between vi and Expression to do the same job!

Funny, I thought this thread would be full of MS astro-turfing, and what do you know!

Is it me?

[log0n]

Or does the original poster not understand the meaning of 'drink the kool-aid'?

Thanks, but no thanks.

[Overfiend1976]

I'll just stick to my Macromedia Flash MX 2004. I like being able to do absolutely everything in notepad :P

Re:neither works

[smilindog2000]

I'm not going to say it's as good as DreamWeaver, but for free Nvu is awesome. Installs with 'sudo apt-get install nvu' in Ubuntu and Debian. I personally download free DreamWeaver templates, and use Nvu from there.

I no longer dual-boot myself. I'm 100% Linux. However, I do miss those rock'in games.

Semantics

[mattpointblank]

What's with Microsoft naming their products with such generic names? Are they hoping that, like Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc, the product names will become synonyms for their function? Just another brick in the wall of antitrust.

Re:Semantics

[GumboNorth]

This is a rare time when Microsoft inherited a product name from one of its acquistions, a vector-based natural media simulating drawing program called Expression, from a company called Creature House (bought by Microsoft around late 2003). This drawing program was inherited by the patent holder, who formed Creature House, when Metacreations divested all its graphics products in 1999 (Painter, Goo, Poser are other scattered titles that come to mind). Metacreations originally acquired Expression from Fractal Design, one of the companies that was part of the merger forming Metacreations in 1997. Fractal Design released version 1 of Expression back in the mid-1990s (1994?).

It appears Microsoft not only kept the product as the graphic component of the suite, but used its name to label the whole suite, formerly known as "Sparkle". I can't speak for the other parts of the suite, but I still have my copy of v3 of Creature House's version, and used the March 2006 CTP release of Microsoft's version, and they largely stayed with the original product, rather than "Microsofting" the interface (e.g., a color picking tool that doesn't bring up the puke-color dialog tool that harkens back to Windows 3.0). Heck, they kept the EPS, Illustrator and PDF export options so far, and Adobe support in Microsoft products in darn-near miraculous.

Good CSS support?

[wazzzup]

So, if the css support is good with this product, then what rendering engine does the preview use? Certainly not the IE engine if the claim for good css support is to be beleived. If it's not the IE engine, then why aren't they using it for IE?

My guess is the preview is IE-based and therefore a worthless tool if you're designing clean CSS.

Re:Good CSS support?

[SoSueMe]

There is Not good CSS support in the next iteration of the browser so, how could we expect good support in an IDE? Comments on I.E 7

Re:Good CSS support?

[jeffgtr]

Yes! You hit the nail on the head.

Re:Good CSS support?

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, it's not so trivial to replace the rendering engine in IE for a lot of reasons, including legacy application support (think Quicken or Quickbooks). My guess is that the rendering engine of Expression *WILL* actually end up as the basis for the rendering engine in IE in some future version. They can develop an all new engine and use Expression as a test bed before they spend the effort to integrate it into IE.

Re:Good CSS support?

[otherniceman]

There is no internal preview engine. You always preview in an external browser, yes the default is IE, but you can add you own browsers to the list. Or are you talking about the design view? Which is, I believe based on IE.

Drink the Koolaid?

[itlurksbeneath]

I'm sorry... How is following a set of standards "drinking the Koolaid"? Using MS tools for everything because management says it's "good policy" instead of using the right tool for the job is drinking the Koolaid (or at least management drank the Koolaid).

I want to believe

[alienmole]

The Jonestown incident is the whole point: drinking the Kool-Aid is an act of unquestioning blind allegiance, with no critical thought involved. The reason it's such a popular expression is that you see so many people behaving this way, towards all sorts of things not worthy of such behavior, like companies, politicians, cars, you name it. As Mulder might put it, they want to believe... in something, anything.

Re:I want to believe

[fm6]

...drinking the Kool-Aid is an act of unquestioning blind allegiance, with no critical thought involved

That's a very logical definition, but I have never heard "drink the Kool-Aid" used that way. It always means "accept a new idea". That's certainly the case here: when the writer said "Microsoft has drunk the Kool-Aid" he certainly didn't mean that Microsoft has sword "unquestioning blind allegiance" to web standards. That would make no sense, since Microsoft has resisted web standards for years!

Re:I want to believe

[Reaperducer]

That's a very logical definition, but I have never heard "drink the Kool-Aid" used that way. It always means "accept a new idea".

You might think that if you're under 30, or poorly educated. But the Jonestown link is the correct one.

Re:I want to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't help doing some research, but only to see if Flavor-ade was indeed the drink I had as a child (mid twenties) when I still lived in Dominican Republic (non-english speaking country, so product and idiomatic expression influence is very, very faint.)

According to the Wikipedia as of some days ago. No offense, but I checked dates to see if maybe one of you had edited it to reflect the Wikiality ;)

One lasting legacy of the Jonestown tragedy is the saying, "Don't drink the Kool-Aid." This has come to mean, "Don't trust any group you find to be a little on the kooky side," or "Whatever they tell you, don't believe it too strongly."

The phrase can also be used in the opposite sense to indicate that one has blindly embraced a particular philosophy or perspective (a "Kool-Aid Drinker"). This usage is generally limited to those in or commenting on United States politics, but also appears in discussions on computer technology, where someone who is a staunch advocate for a particular technology is described as having "drunk the Kool-Aid". This is also frequently used in discussions about sports; when a fan makes an overly-optimistic prediction or hopeful statement, usually about a traditionally woeful team or franchise, others may comment that he is "drinking the Kool-Aid." This is the only usage of "Kool-Aid" that non-American speakers of English are likely to recognise.

Re:I want to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Replying to my own post to specify: apparently both uses are OK, though my original experience in 10 years in the US is with the cult-influenced meaning. What is odd is that people have a hard time accepting that phrases aren't the same everywhere, especially in a world where so many speakers are free to change the language and re-conceive memes :)

Re:I want to believe

[alienmole]

The usage you describe is just a dilution of the original usage. If you've never heard it used that way, and you live in the U.S., it may be because you already had a preconception about what it meant. In the tech context, for another definition aside from the Wikipedia one someone pointed to, see the Jargon File.

Re:I want to believe

[mdhoover]

I thought the origins of the comment was from Tom Wolfes "the electric kool-aid acid test", concerning Ken Kesey and his crew in the 60's setting up parties with LSD laced Kool-Aid...

Re:I want to believe

[alienmole]

I agree, those are the origins of the phrase, but it took on a different meaning after Jonestown.

Well I don't think so

[lightningspirit]

Microsoft Expression is a copy from Macromedia Homesite and not from Dreamweaver... i think they need to work hard to touch dreamweaver.

Re:Well I don't think so

[soliptic]

I find that interesting, considering I like Homesite quite a lot (finally persuaded to use it instead of vanilla wordpad) and think Dreamweaver is a bloated piece of crap.

I might have been interested in checking this out if it supported php (by which I mean, syntax highlighting), but from what I gather it doesn't, so nevermind.

video mktg content doesn't work

[steverar]

The video mtkg demo doesn't play correctly in Firefox on a Mac. I think I'll pass

Re:video mktg content doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprise, surprise. That combination is a nightmare to get to function correctly. Make it look good in FF/Win and FF/Lnx then go look on FF/Mac and I gaurantee the Mac will render something wierd.

Okay but what if

[Mateo_LeFou]

"And users would just say "Fuck you" to said site and move on to the next one."

Okay but what if the next one says the same thing or something similar. Or not the next site, but another one, later that day. Or the following day. Then another one. At some point the users gonna say "why are all these people pist at IE?"

The point of boycott-type pressure is not to create an immediate and complete crumbling of the other side's support. It's to build up a groundswell until the other side can no longer ignore the voice of a few (hundred? thousand? million?) disgruntled weirdos.

Re:Okay but what if

[JacksBrokenCode]

At some point the users gonna say "why are all these people pist at IE?"

I doubt it.

When people go to little blogs all day and see that some sites don't like IE, but then they go to their bank's website and it doesn't care... And they go to major news corporation sites and those sites don't care... And then they go car shopping and Ford's website doesn't care... do you get where I'm going with this? People are more likely to respect the opinion of major sites with millions of dollars invested in them (wellsfargo.com, etc.) than small company sites or blogs. The corporations aren't going to put out non-IE-compliant sites because IE has huge marketshare and corporations are more interested in customer-service than taking philosophical stands.

Personally I can't stand the "this site is better in browser X" notices because, in my opinion, a web designer's job is to design web pages that work for the majority of visitors. Too many "designers" forget that they are designing the pages for the visitors, not for themselves. As a visitor to a webpage, I don't care what browser the designer thinks I should be using, I just want the page to work. If I visit it in IE and the page breaks, I feel it is partly IE's fault for not making things easier for designers but also the designer's fault for not realizing that "going the extra mile" would've made the site experience better. Every site I design is designed to be standards compliant and then I include a few minor hacks to get IE to display correctly. I don't feel I've done my job properly until the site looks/operates nearly identical in IE (6 & 7), Firefox, Opera (8 & 9), and Safari. I don't have the time to test every browser known to man, but I figure those browsers cover the vast majority of visitors. Yes, it would be much easier to just code it to be standards-compliant and not give a shit about how it displays in various browsers, but that's not good design.

Re:Okay but what if

[Arancaytar]

The "rule by majority" concept would hold if there were no standard to follow. There is. And as long as there is a correct way to write HTML or XHTML, there is no reason to test web pages by opening it in every browser in existence.

I test my pages against the validator, and for good measure check in Firefox whether it looks the way I wanted it to. This isn't "snubbing IE" either - most of the time, IE still renders the page passably. The problem with IE is not so much that it renders correct mark-up badly, but that it is unpredictable when in "quirks mode" (which is often, since few designers care about valid markup).

Re:Okay but what if

[creysoft]

As a professional web designer who does it for a living, I just wanted to bring up one point: While it's true that we design pages for visitors and not ourselves*, the main reason we complain is that lack of standards compliance PREVENTS us from delivering the best possible client experience - for several reasons:

1) Every project has a certain maximum amount of time ($X hours) it can reasonably take to complete. These $X hours can be divided up into design, user testing, and browser fixes, among other things. Every hour spent fixing cross-browser problems is an hour less I can spend on design and user testing, meaning that the standards issues are sucking up time that could be spent on MUCH more visitor-valuable things.

2) The cross browser issues end up forcing us to not take advantage of many useful aspects of the standards, leading to a "lowest common denominator" design philosophy. There are a number of very cool things we could be doing for visitors if only IE (and, very rarely, Firefox) implemented it.

3) Because clients WANT cool pages, we're often forced to implement those features anyway. However, because of the aforementioned lack of standards compliance, we have to use clumsy hacks or workarounds to get the general effect. These solutions are often inferior to the results we would have achieved if we could have gone the "simple" route, and usually cost the visitor, in terms of bandwidth, performance, and interface consistency.

There are other things I could bring up, but I believe I've made my point. The bottom line is that we *do* whine about standards compliance and how annoying it can make our jobs, but it's not always just about us. Lack of standards support costs visitors too. If the standards were followed, the web would be a very different, and much more exciting place.**

* Actually, we design for our clients. Their (often non-negotiable) wishes conflict with the best interests of the visitors with surprising frequency. Attempts to educate clients in this area are often not successful.

** I know not everyone likes flashy, animated, AJAX-ey websites, but native client side support could make a lot of the problems currently irritating web trends far less annoying. My favorite example in this regard is text-shadow. Widely derided by many as a useless and frivolous thing to be in a standard, if you stop and think about how many graphics exist SOLELY for the purpose of giving some otherwise plain text a subtle shadow, we could be saving terabytes of bandwidth per month. Not to mention giving now-static shadows all the benefits and flexibility of a CSS property. Even if you hate drop shadows - having them defined via CSS would theoretically give you the ability to actually turn them off, provided you can figure out how to make your local stylesheet override that particular property on a global level.

Re:Okay but what if

[RobbieGee]

Even if you hate drop shadows - having them defined via CSS would theoretically give you the ability to actually turn them off, provided you can figure out how to make your local stylesheet override that particular property on a global level.

Oh, you mean like *{text-shadow:none !important;} ?

Re:Okay but what if

[JacksBrokenCode]

Valid points and well written.

I understand that things must be prioritized and testing cross-browser support can take too much time. I also understand that sometimes money and time simply aren't sufficient to test the site in every browser under the sun. My complaint is more directed at the developers who would rather simply say "no" based on some ethical-superiority mindset than decide whether or not they can afford to devote resources for cross-browser support on a case-by-case basis.

Re:Okay but what if

[creysoft]

Probably too late to be replying to this thread, but yes, I know. My point was that 99% of users probably doesn't even know they *have* a local stylesheet, or that it can be changed, much less how to actually configure it. It's a brief acknowledgement of the most obvious refutation of my own point: Just because something is theoretically configurable doesn't mean a significant number of people will actually configure it.

Re:Okay but what if

[RobbieGee]

Probably too late for anyone with no email notice, at least :-)

Regarding the configuration, rarely does anyone write the code to configure something themselves, but using an interface a lot of users may install something someone else wrote. Just look at Firefox's extensions.

In Opera, you can easily add site specific stylesheets - and so there are stylesheets available for download that alter the presentation of sites. For example, I didn't like how comments were indented at Slashdot, so I added a 2px border on the left of each comment, which lets me easily see the indentation level of each post. They are nested which also lets me set different colors for each indentation level. I could easily make that stylesheet available to others with a quick explanation of how to add it.

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[InsertCleverUsername]

I'm a well-paid M$ fanboy (add me to your Foes list now!), but I can't agree enough. IE has been an unforgivable mess from it's inception. Nothing would make my day like an end to finding workarounds for Microsoft's unique browser "standards."

Obviously

[ztuni]

"One caution: Web Designer currently only supports ASP.NET. Microsoft built the ASP.NET platform; it isn't a surprise that Expression Web Designer was designed to support that platform. This is obviously a drawback for those designers who work with PHP, JSP, and other non-ASP.NET platforms, making it difficult for Microsoft to expand its reach beyond the ASP.NET users.'"

You know what? I think this is a drawback for those designers who work with non-ASP.net platforms.

Gotta say it more than twice

Re:neither works

[FST777]

I solely use Quanta for webdevving, but I'm sure that's just me... But still you might want to give it a go...

ASP.NET?

[gettingbraver]

Anyone see this?

Maybe you sat down to help grandma sign up for the new Medicare Prescription Drug plan this year? If you and gramps ended up staring at a HTTP 500 response code, you weren't alone. The Medicare website, a mishmash of Microsoft ASP and ASP.NET pages, has been overwhelmed by activity, and, from most reports, is suffering from frequent outages.

I don't know how many saw the site last year (helping a relative enroll in Medicare D, maybe), but it damn near impossible! I can't even imagine someone who is not internet-literate following all everything, the way that it was originally designed (and subsequently changed). But, maybe that was the whole idea.

Re:ASP.NET?

[JackieBrown]

Wow!! Nice try for a tier change of topic.

no way

[Anonymous Coward]

no way, they're trying to lock me in their tools and technology (asp.net? gosh, anybody programming in it?). ms please kiss my ass

Re:neither works

[orasio]

I have been talking with good designer friends for ages about that issue.
What I have come to understand is that Dreamweaver is a great app for web development.
What I finally understood, and they confirmed, is that the wysiwyg part of Dreamweaver is not what makes it so great.
They love it for the integration it provides, and powerful management of project (searches, publishing, that kind of stuff).
They don't use the visual editing, because it doesn't produce profesional output, and editing right into the code view is much more reliable.

If that is your case too, plus, you are proficient with common console tools, like grep/diff, and using shell scripts to perform batch jobs like changing jpegs resolutions, you can replace Dreamweaver with Quanta Plus, or the lighter Bluefish. All the help you need for editing html and css. And remember to install ies4linux , so you can see the result on IE, too.

If that is not your case, keep DreamWeaver and try to be happy. But stay away from NVU, that's only useful for mockups or very quick and small stuff.

Wrong app.

[adolfojp]

To make ASP.NET programming you use Visual Studio Express or better. This app is nothing more than the evolution of Front Page. Yes, you can use it to insert ASP.NET controls but nothing more. You can use it to insert PHP server tags if you want. However, the purpose of this app is to make web pages, not web applications.

Using Dreamweaver's built in functionality to insert PHP snippets is not only foolish but discouraged. Using the Expression web designer to make ASP.NET apps is futile at best.

Re:Wrong app.

[Shados]

My guess is that the ASP.NET features of this thing are similar to the Dreamweaver's snippets (I didn't use Dreamweaver since the the original MX, so bear with me if that changed). Its to prototype stuff, or to use in very simple scenarios. A possible use of this tool is for a designer, who makes the page, then give it to an ASP.NET programmer to plug in with the other tiers of the application (business logic, DAL, and so on). One use of being able to add the server controls, would be for the designer to use the asp.net server controls instead of generic textboxes, and so on, so that the programmer won't have to replace them, for example. In other words, its simply there as a "just in case you happen to need it, but its unlikely" deal, which seems to fall straight in line with the purpose of this application in a web app development cycle.

To confirm what you seem to imply, indeed, seeing this tool as an ASP.NET tool is silly, and I have issues understanding why so many comments on this article seems to see this tool that way. Really, anyone who thinks any ASP.NET programmer will be using this to plug the backend code in their application, have absolutely no clue how an ASP.NET workflow goes.

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[Soong]

Yes. I don't have IE or any M$ software. M$ doesn't exist in my world.

With some searching I did finally find a windows box lying around at work and test a couple pages. And now my website serves a crippled minimal feature version unless your user-agent string says "Firefox" or "Safari", and it adds a "Get Firefox" button.

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[JacksBrokenCode]

Are you a professional designer? Whether or not you support Microsoft's decisions, it seems silly not to offer better than "crippled minimal feature version" support for the browser with the most market-share. I can't imagine telling one of my clients (or my boss if I worked for a different company) "Yeah, your/our site doesn't look good in the most popular browser, but it's because their philosophy is flawed."

And, if it's about standards-supporting browsers, why don't you test for Opera?

eat shit peon

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck The Ignorant. More money for me.

Re:eat shit peon

[Anonymous Coward]

More money for me.

With your level of insecurity? best of luck then.

Professionals

[nurb432]

Well, if you want to focus to writing for the largest installed software base, with the largest company on the planet.. Lots of money to be made there, dont see much of a long term drawback for the average coder.

Professional, is a relative term.

Re:Professionals

[mab]

Where did you get "Largest company on the planet" from http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/18/06f2k_The-Forb es-2000_Rank.html/ frobes has them at 55 and IBM at 23.

Re:Professionals

[KimmoA]

Yes, because money is the only thing that ever matters...

Re:Professionals

[nurb432]

Once you grow up, you will understand. Money IS all that matters.

Re:Professionals

[KimmoA]

Right...

Re:Professionals

[TheUser0x58]

Well, if you want to focus to writing for the largest installed software base

For server-side development, this is hardly the case. Its no secret that Microsoft and ASP.NET are a far cry from top dog in the professional web development world. Stop your Microsoft wanking.

Everything starts with Dreamweaver

[LibertineR]

It doesnt matter if I am doing PHP, ASP.NET, or just some table-less page, they all start in Dreamweaver. Most of my pages end up as Master Pages within Visual Studio, since most of our work is done in ASP.NET, but we would be crazy to try switch to another designer at this point, unless it is miles better then Dreamweaver to the point where we would be more productive with it right from the start.

With any designer, once you are comfortable and productive, it doesnt make any sense to learn something else unless your tool doesnt support a popular standard. When Dreamweaver fixed their CSS support back in MX, this game was over. The Dreamweaver-Fireworks combination is not about to be matched by anything from Microsoft, and even if they do match it in every category, they still have to show me how it is worth it for us to switch.

You can look at anyone's .aspx pages and tell whether they did everything in Visual Studio, or if their pages got some help from a real designer like Dreamweaver. Microsoft should have bought Macromedia when they had the chance, and incorporated their designer into VS. If Dreamweaver ever gets codebehind and .NET 2.0 support, I might give up Visual Studio altogether.

So what if it's just for ASP.NET

[merlin_jim]

Did you really expect Microsoft to build a Web Designer that didn't target their platform? Expressions is part of Visual Studio - it was unveiled at Professional Developers Conference 2005. Of course it's going to target ASP.NET - that's the web development language for Visual Studio .NET.

What I don't understand is why anyone would think they would do anything different? You may think the "right" way to make software like this is to target multiple platforms - but that doesn't make it the right way. Microsoft does not build software that way. Arguably they have proven that their way is more "right" - by the Heinlein test that it is the way that is most succesful. They've built a multinational corporate entity, producing software that runs the vast majority of the world's computing equipment, and they built this empire by writing software that was meant to work well together - and didn't really care how well it worked with other software.

They've made great strides in this area lately, showing a willingness to support alternative standards and open specifications, and even recognizing that interoperability is a value proposition to their customers - but I think it's idealistic dreaming at best to hope they would build a development tool for a competing platform.

I don't do PHP, Perl, CGI, J2EE or any of the "slashdot-approved" server-side scripting languages. I don't really care if my development environment supports any of them. I've tried them all, and had paying customers for most, and honestly prefer ASP.NET. I'm not trying to start an argument about which is better - merely stating my opinion. As such, Expressions is the perfect web designer for me, and I don't think anyone doing ASP.NET development would argue with that, if all you want to do in the world is ASP.NET development, then Expressions is clearly superior to any 3rd party tool - and no secret why, Microsoft has the expertise in their own API, and most likely a deeper understanding than is available in public documentation.

Re:So what if it's just for ASP.NET

[pixelguru]

Did you really expect Microsoft to build a Web Designer that didn't target their platform?

So why does Dreamweaver support anything except ColdFusion?

Unlike you, I develop using whatever scripting language the project calls for, and I need a DE that can be flexible enough to handle my needs. This offering from Microsoft (and the name they chose for it) is just a bad joke to me.

Re:So what if it's just for ASP.NET

[merlin_jim]

So why does Dreamweaver support anything except ColdFusion?

That's what they chose to do with their tool - and its worked to them. They wanted to build a good development tool allowing designers to pick up one skillset that would allow them to be productive in a variety of environments. Their tool was built with the idea of becoming the tool that designers would prefer to use and learn - and is wildly succesful for it.

Microsoft does not want to compete with Dreamweaver. Frontpage and Interdev convinced them they would fail miserably at it. Instead they wanted to focus on their core competency and build a tool far better than any competitor could for their development environment. They succeeded, and as someone who uses their environment I'm very excited about it.

Go ahead use Dreamweaver, I'm glad you have it. I have the luxury of working for a consulting firm that also functions as a hosting provider so we can use a wholly Microsoft environment - and I'd wager the rich development tools we have now are better than the cross-platform analogues in the majority of cases. There are definitely instances where that isn't the case - Erwin is a clear example of a data modeller better than anything in the Microsoft toolset. This is one case where that was the case and isn't anymore, and I can't say I'm too upset about that...

Re:So what if it's just for ASP.NET

[multipartmixed]

I don't do PHP, Perl, CGI, J2EE or any of the "slashdot-approved" server-side scripting languages. I don't really care if my development environment supports any of them. I've tried them all

Uh-huh. You've tried them all? Really?

If you did, then you should really realize that neither CGI nor J2EE are scripting languages... assuming you have half a developer.brain.

If you didn't, then are standing up on slashdot, thumping your chest about something you have no clue about. Which should really surprise me, particularly attached to an MS-fanboy-attracting-article.

Re:So what if it's just for ASP.NET

[merlin_jim]

If you did, then you should really realize that neither CGI nor J2EE are scripting languages... assuming you have half a developer.brain.

Technically, neither is ASP.NET, it being compiled to IL in much the same way Java is compiled to bytecode (and with similar server container object models, as well). But the point wasn't to nitpick the finer points of technical naming of strange and varied runtimes - the point was to voice my opinion about the relative merits of these choices, particularly with regards to the type of tool being discussed.

Uh-huh. You've tried them all? Really?

Yeap. There are current J2EE production sites with large userbases that I wrote. We used to run some internal company apps on PHP but found the environment cumbersome and primitive. Perl's a requirement for any unix hacker, and while I've never written a website in it, nor would I want to. My first ever web server was a straight CGI doing 3D image rendering on request. And, this is the point of my previous post, after honestly giving many of the more popular options their chance, given the choice, I'll take Expressions and ASP.NET against any of the alternatives without hesitation or equivocation, and therefore I don't really care if Expressions Web Designer supports any other technologies or not...

Re:So what if it's just for ASP.NET

[KlomDark]

You're a fucking punk, go stick to your lame little sucky sites. Obviously you don't work on 'real' sites that are so complex that you need something to manage all the files, text-editor boy. Perl for a web site, wow, that's freakin awesome, till ya get above 50 simultaneous users then the whole thing shits itself.

Beware

[HotGarbage]

If you don't renew your license each year, your websites will stop woking.

Re:Beware

[Anonymous Coward]

Decent websites actually produce enough profit that MS licencing fees are trivial.

Gah

[atokata]

I just read all the comments on this story. Even the reall stupid ones that people posted anonymously.

Here's a personal anecdote:
I was something like, maybe 16-17 when Frontpage came out. I tried it out, thought it was pretty cool.... except.. why doesn't that table justify properly? And, WTF is the deal with inconsistant fonts when I click the little button..?

So, fast forward five or six years, and now I'm a freelancer, doing all kinds of different stuff. About two years ago, I forgot to close my sunroof, and my carbon paper book that I'd used for invoicing basically melted into my passenger seat. Pretty, as you can imagine.

So, I said to myself, "I should really put together some kind of web-based thingamajig to take care of that shit for me."
Since I'm not a pro web guy, I muddled around with FP, Dreamweaver, Bluefish, etc. Fucking frustrating. Finally, I bit the bullet and spent about two months reading as much from w3schools.com and php.net as I could handle. For windows, I started using Crimson Editor (www.crimsoneditor.com) and Jed in Linux.

And, you know what? The *learning* was the real prize of that project-- and the top-notch custom built invoicing system was just icing. Yes, it took a long time, and yes, I did some dumb stuff (like the thousand-line nested if statement that a buddy rewrote to five lines). Yes, it's tedious to look up code examples and documentation. But, I know for a fact that had I been using tools like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, and whatever else you might throw at something like this, it would never have gotten done, I'd still be using that damn carbon book, and I wouldn't have learned an entirely new set of skills to aid my business.

(Though, for the record, I wouldn't be a professional web designer if my life depended on it. I've had so many customers try to get those guys to do P = NP problems that it's lost its hilarity.)

PHP for Expression

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. since most of MS products are COM or .NET based, and most export some type of API, even if its only IUnknown. The only limitation seems to be someone mapping PHP functions to COM or .NET objects. In fact, just overlay the existing functions and take control of the interface, use it as a shell for designing other Web languages. Surely there are a few ASP only features.. why not grey them out or disable them, or repurpose them for Wikipedia or the like. Its only a thought, but the old model seems to be recurring at a suprising rate in Microsoft products, like they are busy teaching older Microsoft methodologies than coming up with new ones. Maybe its a crunch in retirees or Startup groupees, and they need to train new blood. At least that gives a base from which to march forward... with existing product methods.

Outsourcing seems to have the same bottleneck. To outsource you must catch the Genie in the bottle and ship him overseas, and hope he works his magic in a foreign land. Problem there could be that that culture rejects it like the human body produces antibodies to fight off an infection. Some cultures are at various times in history are Xenophobic, if only at the government level. Only experiments however can tell, or test the waters.

It surprises me how marketing demonstrates time and time again the things we learn in kindergarten seem to attract customers, honesty, integrity, equality.. but when we grow up we're taught a variation of game theory at the business level.. do on to others before they do on to you.. and we're exporting that in many areas.

If we ignored game theory for a moment, it seems people always age and always retire, and at the edges, there is a real honest desire to train future replacements, and transfer the knowledge so that it doesn't get lost.. its not always the case.. sometimes something might replace the old technology-wise. But the real loss leads to reduced profits and expensive R&D all over again for the next generation. Imagine if Archimedes differential calculus had not been lost for 2000 years? What kind of profits could have come out of that?

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Expression is teh roxor
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Clean ... ish

[pbhj]

Well yeah. You're right it does create clean code just like any editor that can be used as a text editor. So from that perspective MS Word also produces clean code, you just have to type the code in and use the .txt output filter (i'm assuming it still does that without messing up, I bet you get a nasty BOM or something, it's been a while).

The thing that gets me is that designers that want to make minor edits in design view mess my clean pages up in seconds without realising what they're doing. There's no "we're adding swathes of unnecessary code is that ok yes//no" warning.

Also, clean code invariably isn't displayed correctly in the design view.

DW is for me no better than many other code completion editors; except ... the version management and integrated ftp. Kate does the FTP stuff, but I don't get versions and easy roll-back. Setting up my own SVN server seems overkill.

Re:Clean ... ish

[NMerriam]

Well yeah. You're right it does create clean code just like any editor that can be used as a text editor.

DW will create 100% perfectly clean code using only the design view if you use it correctly (ie, use the tag selector) and set up the coding preferences to how you want them.

The thing that gets me is that designers that want to make minor edits in design view mess my clean pages up in seconds without realising what they're doing. There's no "we're adding swathes of unnecessary code is that ok yes//no" warning.

There are yes/no confirmations before DW changes any existing code. They can be turned off in the preferences (as can many aspects of the rewriting/reformatting) but they are there. The key part of your post is "without realising what they're doing" -- don't blame the tool because the people using it haven't bothered to learn how to use it properly. If inexperienced editors (such as secretaries) need to be able to do things, set up editable regions and put the new users on Contribute, that way they can be pretty much locked off from code that is over their heads. Of course, now it's usually easier for such users to update the site through a database interface and never have to touch the code.

I will agree that DW has a bad habit of displaying 100% good code strangely in design view sometimes. I'm not sure where the limitation is there -- the web developer extensions for many browsers now support highlighting DIVs and such, so hopefully the DW team will incorporate those browser techniquies rather than whatever hacking they've been doing to the rendering engines.

Re:Clean ... ish

[pbhj]

I've never seen those "code changin" warnings. But I'm a serial tweaker so I set it up for myself, what I need is to have a per-site setup (eg xml file) that get's used (automagically) for that site so it's not possible to edit in non-xhtml stuff or use relative URLs instead of absolute, or whatever.

Oh and the rendering engine is mshtml, isn't it.

It's not all bad but clean code is not something I'm willing to associate with DW yet.

Re:Clean ... ish

[NMerriam]

what I need is to have a per-site setup (eg xml file) that get's used (automagically) for that site so it's not possible to edit in non-xhtml stuff or use relative URLs instead of absolute, or whatever.

That is basically what Contribute is, in a nutshell. Your skilled, HTML-savvy, technical user sets up the site, sets regions as editable (many small editable regions are better than one big region for obvious reasons), and sets parameters and security, and then Contribute logs in as a client and lets users edit without having to know what they're doing. It's pretty much what Frontpage promised a decade ago, but it actually works and doesn't create horrible code.

You can still get multiple tags due to users selecting things in a lousy manner, but by setting up CSS and styles within the program, you can successfully train most of them to just click in the paragraph and apply a style, which behaves as it should.

Front Page

[Nom du Keyboard]

Front Page was pretty good when MS first acquired it. Easier and cheaper than InterDev, but still needed those pesky FP Extensions. It just failed to keep up afterwards, as if it just wasn't important enough to MS for regular updates. Much like IE6.

Now does Expressions start that same cycle of neglect all over again?

Re:Front Page

[billeger]

There is such a thing as "appropriate technology" in web design, too. Out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- in a predominately rural area -- not everyone has a modern computer. Many of us can only get modem speed with DSL and up simply unavailable.

So I use FrontPage for commercial webs in that situation. Never knew until now that it isn't perfect which surprises me for a MicroSoft product but we get along. I've used every edition since the first. The newest 2003 iteration is harder to use than that first try and I see no real improvements!

What it can do is stay in the client's computer and his staff can -- almost always -- handle simple updates or add data such as the current assets for the credit union client. Staff changes are fairly common this close to the farms.

My point is that we need some simple source of code for this type of use. If every WhiskeyWig program dips into advanced graphics our client's viewers will get knocked off. I've never had a complaint that our sites are "old timey" or boring because they don't spin or flash or seek un-natural attention with pop-ups.

Less is more in simpler areas of our world -- and doesn't crash as much!

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[Quantam]

In other words, you think that if you close your eyes nobody can see you.

Buried: Expression 3 Software

[not_hylas( )]

Buried: Creature House Expression 3, Mac/Win Software.
The SW (Mac) says Beta, it's not, just re-branded

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/gr aphic_designer/previous/expression3_home.aspx

DL

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/gr aphic_designer/previous/expression3_downloadlinks. aspx

Goodies:

http://www.studioe3.com/lessons/index.asp

http://www.graphicxtras.com/products/express.htm

Get it while you can, 'cause after this ... it's (probably) gonna be gone.

My Anniversary present to you.

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[Soong]

I'm not a professional designer, just a hobbiest. But, I'm trying to make something useful. IE gets in the way.

I'm an idealist and I think everyone should be using what is obviously the best thing.

What if the world is right and I'm wrong? I guess I'll accomodate the world, but I won't like it, and I may still claim that I'm right and push for my way. Making the non IE page better may be part of that push.

I've never really checked it out, but there it is, so I guess I should try Opera.

Dreamweaver slows companies down

[cartel]

I make web sites for a living, and I will not use Dreamweaver. Every single time - without an exception - anytime I have come across a web site developed using Dreamweaver (or any WYSIWYG editors for that matter) it is based on junk code.

When I make web sites, they are always 95% - 100% XHTML 1.0 and CSS compliant, so I now what I'm talking about. At work it slows us down tremendously when a web designer decides to deveop a site in Dreamweaver. It takes more time to fix things than to develop the whole site by hand. And I'll not even mention how long it takes to edit or add something new into the pages.

Until computers can literally think like humans can - and I truly believe they will, they will NEVER be able to produce web sites or computer programs at the same level of quality that a human can because it does not understand what the person is trying to do (e.g., establishing user-defined CSS classes).

What a pitty

[suv4x4]

I use Dreamweaver for PHP/MySQL/CSS/HTML/JS and a bit of WYSIWYG-style development. It's extremely extensible and you can literally make Dreamweaver interpret, autocomplete, color and display your own made-up language but modifying a bunch of XML-files in its config folder (the changes are then exportable and redistributable as an "extension", sort of like on Firefox).

I see the potential of Microsoft's software. They do great stuff, but they, somewhat like Sony, are too locked up on supporting exclusively and pushing their own solutions in their IDE-s.

This works with C#/C++/VisualBasic in VisualStudio where it's only natural that the targeted platform is Win32/.NET.
It works less well on web, which is more than .NET offers.

But they are a business, they have their right to try whatever they believe will fly, if it doesn't fly, they'll simply readjust their strategy.

Dreamweaver right now is a perfect solution for years to come (Adobe is not frozen in time too).

Hm... Dreamweaver for Standard compliant code ?

[DarkWicked]

I'm an experienced web developper (more than 5 years). For 4 years I produced dirty, ugly non standard compliant html using dreamweaver.

Now I've LEARNED what standard compliant Xhtml and CSS code is, the clean one, the one without css mixed with your xhtml... and there's no way I could do anything like that with dreamweaver. The real standard compliant code can only be produced with an experienced web developper and a basic editor that doesn't write the code for you.

Ps : Just because it validates as standard compliant code doesn't mean it's acceptable, clean, semanticaly correct code.

Source Control?

[unity]

Uhm, I use Vstudio with SourceGear's Vault program on a daily basis with absolutely no problems and it is definitely a real source control program. I'd have to agree about the designer part of vstudio, but I don't mind since I've never used a WYSIWG html editor.

Re:Standards Compliant Editor Useless Without IE F

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I'm an idealist

No you're not. You're just another arrogant, elitist litte asshole who thinks he knows better than anyone else.

You have truly found your spiritual home here at /.

M$ LOL LOL LOL !!!!!!!!!

Stabilty

[JcMorin]

I've been using Microsoft Expression on an ASP.NET site with master pages and custom .NET control and find it usable due to many crashed of the application. For instance switching between code and design mode can crash or just selecting html code in split mode. The application is great in feature and easy to use but need to be rock solid else I will not be able to recommend it at final release.

Re:Stabilty

[Nom du Keyboard]

I've been using Microsoft Expression on an ASP.NET site with master pages and custom .NET control and find it usable due to many crashed of the application.

Did you, perhaps, mean unusable?

Re:do what you like

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried mono, and sorry it was not up to it, maybe for small programs, but not a 10year, 1mill+ codelines project.

I was used to C# and C++ using .NET in VisualC++, but when I had to port our software to linux I started on scratch again.

Now We've thrown out .Net, use C/C++/perl with activestate's Komodo IDE and Trolltechs QT v4 cross compile GUI libraries.
We decided to keep all the codebase ansi c/c++ strict with all the wrappers done in perl for cpan library support and productivity.

Earlier we could just dream about having a mac-version, but now we ported it in 2days due to Trolltechs wonderful QT classes.
I also found that moving from Microsofts compilers to intels compilers gave us a 10% speed boost.

Re:neither works

[rojer_31]

Actually the bugfix version of nvu - http://kompozer.net/ is pretty decent.

no

[Anonymous Coward]

no, thanks for this shit.

Microsoft Wanking?

[nurb432]

Whatever that means, i really doubt it.

I only state the facts, they make more $ for people then anything else in the software world at this point, so there is nothing wrong with specializing in it.. That was my point.

If one chooses to do other things that is fine too, just realize its for a smaller, uncertain market.

Very large corporate input ...

[Che Guevarra]

Well, as much as it hurts me to post this here:
I used to be a graphic designer who used a Mac every day for 10 years.
I'm now a software developer in an exclusive .ASP, .ADO, .NET, SQL Server environment ... I'm happy to have this tool. I'm sorry to say this, but the MS camp is really putting out the hurt. The utility of their software is hard. We have a lot of data that needs service and this stuff ain't soft.

Re:

[ad0gg]

Any decent web application seperates the web designers from the code. That way you can hand off the html parts to a web designer to create the ui while having them know almost nothing about the back end. This is where classic asp, and php fail and asp.net or any xml/xslt solution shines.

"Supporting" a platform

[Caspian]

Microsoft built the ASP.NET platform; it isn't a surprise that Expression Web Designer was designed to support that platform.

This is about more than just supporting the ASP.NET platform; it's about supporting exclusively that platform. A more appropriate verb would be "pimping".