Customer Reviews

Microsoft Expression Web Upgrade from FrontPage [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are using a Microsoft Web-building product for the first time and are going to use Expression Web to create new web sites that meet current Web standards and will display well in a most browsers, you will probably like this program--with its Dream Weaver-type interface and on-the-fly CSS--as much, if not better, than the competitors' programs. However, if you are upgrading from Front Page and are creating thousands of pages of computer-based training material for use on IE7 only (as we are at our company), you will miss a number of very handy features that were present in Front Page 2003. While, on the one hand, the Expression Web interface incorporates the excellent file management features from Front Page (much better than in Dream Weaver) and adds tremendous functionality, there are a number of omissions and quirks that can be extremely frustrating. Here are just a few of them:

1) Front Page provided menu commands for inserting video clips and Flash animations; Expression Web does not. All links to these items must be inserted in the code. Furthermore, there is no mention of this omission by Microsoft either in the help system or on line. The program does, however, include an easy-to-use Snippets tool where, with a little effort, you could store the code for these functions.

2) When you open Expression Web, the Folders view does not include a Title column, and there is no way to access it. I found out by accident that if you open a page in a new window, the Title column magically appears.

3) Microsoft still does not include the Paragraph command on the right-click button. This is one of the most useful commands. The keyboard shortcut <Alt> + O + P can be used to expedite access to the Paragraph command.

4) When you choose to code CSS manually, the Format Painter is disabled. Sometimes I just want to avoid the extra styles Expression Web generates when in Automatic mode, but I want to be able to copy code using the Format Painter.

5) There is no longer a Preview mode. This isn't a big deal because I prefer to view my work in the browser.

6) The shortcut key for previewing in the browser is <F12>, which in almost every other program is reserved for the Save As function. What was Microsoft thinking?

7) If I manually change a link color, the underline shows in the correct color in Expression Web, but not in the browser (it adopts the default link color). This was not a problem in Front Page.

There is more, but you get the idea. This is typical Microsoft development: two steps forward, one step back!

Being a developer, it's always nice to find something that surprises you with its utility and overall quality. This suite is comprised of four (4) products, Web, Design, Blend, and Media. So far, they all work well except for Media which seems very sluggish at times. I'm not sure, yet, why it bogs down but it may well be a setting that I've neglected or set mistakenly. I do have a large amount of audio-visual material for it to catalog and I may have mis-configured it somehow. That said, though, the rest of the suite has, so far, worked very well.

Expression Web is the page/site building tool. It stresses the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and/or ASP.NET for the design and implementation of web content. It's such a step up from FrontPage that it's not even comparable. FrontPage created the muddiest code I've ever worked with. Because of that, I stopped using it and just hand coded everything. I also tried other authoring tools on the market but they were all just glorified text editors and weren't really very helpful over a good editor. When I first downloaded the eval version of Expression Web, it was an early Beta version and it was very sluggish. However, this release version is very responsive and produces very good content.

Expression Design is a graphics design package with both bit-mapped and vector-based graphic tools. I particularly like the vector tools. I've used Photoshop for a long time and have missed the vector drawing abilities I used to have in CorelDraw. However, I came up with work arounds and such. However, Expression Design may well satisfy my need for Photoshop (and its exhorbitant price). It's a very versatile and useful package. Its use of layers is great just like they are in Photoshop. Many other graphics applications that are in this price range are lacking layers and it's a serious loss.

Expression Blend is almost staggering in its capabilities and implications. When coupled with Visual Studio 2005 (included) and knowledge of the .NET Framework, its a fantastic front end design tool with lots of great animation tools. I'm still getting my feet wet on this tool but, from what I've seen so far, it's gonna be fun!

Expression Media is the only disappointment so far. It's why the package only got a 4 star rating instead of a 5 star. It seems to choke pretty easily. I have about 11000 photos, ranging from JPGs to TIFFs to NEFs (Nikon raw images) to PSDs (Photoshop 7), and although it sees all of them and imports them, the viewing and responsiveness of the program is very sluggish and crash prone. It's crased three times already on me and I'll probably wait for an update or service pack before re-trying it.

Hope this helped. Overall, I highly recommend this package to web develpers that want to use newer, standards-based web content development. The package also is a great helper for developing application graphic content such as custom buttons, etc... for use in Visual Studio 2005 and beyond.

I am a casual user of MS FrontPage. I do believe in upgrading my software as new versions become available. So I purchased the upgrade version of MS Expression. It is not anything like FrontPage. It was designed for a full time web designer and not for a casual user. You had better have a technical dictionary available as neither the software or the accompanying instruction cd tell you what all the acronyms mean. When I finally figured out some of the jargon and was able to create a couple of web pages, it was not WYSIWYG. This is going to take some time to get used to. If you are a casual web author and going to buy this product be prepared to do some serious homework.

The product installed easily, upgrading from my previously installed FrontPage. This new program is feature packed and seems to handle CSS and ASP well. From what I have seen so far, everything is XHTML compliant.

My real heartburn with this product is lack of documentation. Microsoft has always been week on documentation but I think this is a new low. A good user manual, even if it were on disc, would have gone far in my rating this higher.

I think people who have not worked in FrontPage and even some who have, will struggle trying to use any but the basic features.

If you have been using FrontPage, don't expect an easy conversion. You will miss things like the navigation (tree) function and automatic navigation bar (links) function. The idea of better web pages is what I wanted, but it's going to be a long time before I'm comfortable with this program.

Installed fine with no problems. It did not ask for proof of Frontpage ownership. The differences between Frontpage and Expression Web are huge. The help files lack much in the way of help. Be prepared to order books on how to use Expression Web.

I didn't even know that FrontPage was being discontinued till I consulted the website for help on a technical problem. I ended up buying the upgrade to Expression. Transition was flawless, enabling me to find all my old files right where they should have been.

Only one disappointment. I still can't find a way to change the default font. It's a nuisance to manually change it each time I upgrade my web page.

I bought this product thinking it would be a great upgrade to my Front Page. Boy was I wrong. It is nothing like Front Page and a lot of the short cuts that you learned do not work with this product. The instructions are very much like Front Page - non existent. If your happy using Front Page I would not upgrade to this program unless you like a lot of frustration!

I had never created a website, but with a very rudimentary knowledge of HTML was able to make some slight modifications to an existing website with Notepad. I had looked at purchasing FrontPage, but reviews said that it did not work well with Vista, which I had. Therefore, if I was going to buy any program to create a website, price forced me to Expressions Web. After checking the Microsoft website for EW, I discovered that the "upgrade" version would install if there was any version of Microsoft Office on the computer. For the $99 price, I felt I could not go too far wrong.

The install went extremely easy as I do have Office 2007 on the computer. I read the complete EULA and think that it will actually allow me to install EW on multiple computers as long as only one copy is being used at any given time. (If you want to install it on multiple computers, which I did, be sure to read the EULA.)

Some of the reviews had said that the tutorial did not work. They were right. I discovered that the small tutorial had used the word "click" at one point and it should have been "right click". Once that discovery was made, I was able to complete the tutorial. The written documentation is very skimpy, but it does offer some help to a novice if you read it several times.

There is no wizard program to help you create a website as there is in FrontPage. There are, however about a dozen templates. I wanted to create a new website for my family genealogy association and I needed flexibility in having several links to multiple pages with different topics. I chose a "Business" template that I was able to modify to fit my needs. Without any knowledge of HTML, I would not have been able to make these modifications. I also used the help screens and never found one that had instructions that would work for me. I do not know if the help screens were not accurate, or if the problem was caused by something that I had incorrectly done before I went to the help screen. There were also lots of trial and error procedures, but after about 30 hours on the computer, I was finished.

I did not use EW to upload to the web server; instead I used a separate FTP program. I also had the luxury of uploading my beta versions to a subfolder on the website so that I and others could test it out.

I am giving Expressions Web 4 stars because it was economical to buy, easy to install, gave me no problems while running, and did allow me to create a good looking and very functional website. Now I am going to try and find a good instruction book for the program.

I thought FrontPage would be hard to beat for ease-of-use. I am startled at how quick the adjustment was. Expression Web has the intention of being much more standards-compliant than FrontPage, so some handy FrontPage features are missing. But CSS can compensate for them, and Expression Web's user interface is so well-designed that even CSS does not seem so daunting.

Speaking of user interface, it seems to me that Microsoft has combined the best features of Visual Studio's user interface and the Adobe CS (e.g. Photoshop) interface (and resisted the dubious "ribbon" thing it introduced in Microsoft Office 2007). Working in Expression Web seems very natural; things are easy to find, highly customizable, there when you want them.

I think I will be able to use this package for a long time.