Microsoft Expression Web Takes On The Mighty Dreamweaver
When Microsoft released Office 2007, Microsoft FrontPage was conspicuous by its absence. Its place has been taken by Microsoft Expression Web, a product which clearly aims to take some of Adobe Dreamweaver’s huge share of the web design market. For once Microsoft finds itself playing the role of underdog and is sensibly adopting some of the tactics used by Adobe in gaining their dominant position in web design software.
Just as Dreamweaver is part of the Adobe Creative Suite so Expression Web forms part of Expression Studio, a group of programs aimed at equipping web designers with all the tools they need to design and build web sites. Expression Studio comprises Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media. (As a bonus, it also includes Visual Studio 2005 Standard.) So, should Adobe be quaking in their boots or just grinning smugly; how good is Microsoft’s new offering?
At this stage, one would have to say that it is unlikely to become a Dreaweaver-killer. However, it is a serious contender and will undoubtedly take some of Adobe’s market share. Microsoft have created a program which is not simply a reworked version of FrontPage. Expression Web is a standards-compliant development environment which enables web designers to create pages visually and automatically generates the necessary code: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT and ASP.Net.
On the downside, Expression Web only runs on Windows and its tight integration with Visual Studio suggests that a Mac version may be some time in arriving, assuming one ever does arrive. A significant number of web designers prefer to use Macs and, for this reason, will never see Expression Web as a serious rival to Dreamweaver. To win over such Mac diehards, Microsoft will have to make Expression Web not just as good as Dreamweaver but significantly better.
Another potential weakness in Expression Web is that its server-side support is limited to ASP.Net. Dreamweaver offers support for ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, Coldfusion and JSP. This having been said, Dreamweaver’s server-side facilities are fairly long in the tooth and have not been significantly upgraded for about five years and there is still no support for ASP.Net 2.0. It could therefore be argued that both Expression Web and Dreamweaver are lacking in the server-side development area.
Dreamweaver’s relative maturity in the market place gives it a huge advantage. There are over a million web developers using the program. It is perceived as the industry standard for web page creation. As well as the program itself, third-party developers have also created hundreds of useful add-ons (“Dreamweaver extensions” ) which offer such enhanced features as ecommerce and security. Although Expression Web has similar support for add-ons, it will be some years before they significantly enhance the functionality of the basic program.
To summarise, Expression Web is a quality product. Like Dreamweaver, it focuses web designers on creating standards-compliant web pages with the minimum of effort. Adobe will have no option but to take this new contender seriously and come up with some new and innovative features in their next release of Dreamweaver. So, good news all round for users of web development software!
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