Review: Microsoft Expression Web website design

An expensive, but easy to use web design package

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Price: £260

Manufacturer: Microsoft

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Verdict

Pros: Powerful interface; CSS support; accessibility tools
Cons: Doesn't incorporate all non-Microsoft standards; expensive
Overall: Expression Web is a very good web editing suite if you accept the inevitable Microsoft bias

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World 12 Mar 2007

Frontpage is dead, long live Expression Web.

That may not be the official Microsoft line, but with no new versions of Frontpage in the offing there seems to be some effort to move away from the older days of web design.

According to Microsoft, Expression Web is a standards-based web design package.

Before going any further we should be clear that many of these standards are Microsoft standards.

Don't expect to connect to a MySQL database when there are Microsoft alternatives in the form of MSSQL and Access. The same applies with PHP - in Expression Web, ASP.NET is the supported language.

However, other, more important non-Microsoft standards are included. CSS (cascading style sheets) is the most notable and this is at the very heart of Expression Web for both formatting and positioning, more on this later.

The collection of templates is a clear case of quality over quantity with a total of 19 templates, which is about the right amount of choice in our opinion.

If it does seem limited, don't forget that with the formatting power of CSS, the possibilities are broader than you might think. The code produced by the templates is very clean, with none of the extraneous code that appeared in Frontpage.

There is sometimes the impression that the proper method of creating web sites is with a simple text editor. But the benefit of the Expression Web interface is immediately noticeable.

Those wanting to stick with writing code direct will appreciate code completion, but the ability to create an appealing layout using CSS with a WYSIWYG editor is very welcome.

Another notable tool is the Accessibility checker. There are two good reasons for taking the time to run this report and following the advice.

The first is that it is actually a legal requirement for commercial sites, but there's also the fact that a site following the accessibility guidelines is also highly visible to search engines. And with the importance of site ranking at an all time high, this tool arrives at the right time.

The other hot topic in web design circles is the rise of dynamic websites. Expression web offers two approaches to these websites. The first is to use a dynamic template - this sets the top and side panels of the website, so only the main content needs attention.

The second is where sites can be edited online with their own basic content management system (CMS) - ideal for posting digital photos, for example.
Posting sites is simple via a variety of transfer protocols - FTP, WebDAV and the local file system.

Assuming that there is no Microsoft-specific code, there is no reason why the site shouldn't be hosted on a Linux server. In fact, we did just that with one of the personal templates.

Expression Web is supplied with some video tutorials. They are not going to teach the whole process of web design but are a very useful introduction to the interface and the CSS layout options.

Microsoft Expression Web is expensive, but it's still cheaper than the likes of Dreamweaver. It is also worth investigating Visual Studio Web Developer Express Edition, which has more of an emphasis on code than design but is available at no cost.

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