Customer Reviews

Microsoft Expression Web Upgrade [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Expression Web is a great product that competes very favorably with professional web design tools such as Dream Weaver

However, FrontPage up-graders need to be aware that web component wizards, form designer or like conveniences are gone in Expression Web

FrontPage users should expect a significant learning curve if they are not familiar with designing cascading style sheets (CSS), creating web databases and the like. Plan to use FrontPage for your published sites until your skill sets have been upgraded too.

Bought Microsoft Expression Web the day it became available here on Amazon, because of a positive review in a PC Magazine in 2006.
I shall be brief, after 6 years of using both FrontPage and Macromedia's DreamWeaver, I am very impressed by Expression Web, finally the power of DreamWeaver with the usefulness (simplicity) of FrontPage combined.

No offense here, but I have never seen any Program of this quality anytime before coming from Microsoft... very unlike anything else from them.

And the most amazing thing is, unlike any other piece of software from Microsoft, it does not come with the dreaded "activation" curse.
You can install it, then uninstall- and re-install it on a new machine as many times as you like, without having to "re-activate".

If you are a DreamWeaver fan, and are not too happy that Macromedia was sold to Adobe, Microsoft Expression Web is an excellent alternative.
Warmly recommended !

I had just about given up on FrontPage because of its very clumsy use of css and other newer features. Also, the templates were horrible. I started using Expression as a Beta and it is a significant improvement. The templates were very easy to set up, and more significantly, all of the css features are right up front and easy to use.
Yes, this is a programmers application and probably has no interest or suitability for those who want a total turn-key solution.
I've been waiting for this to finally be released for sale and am excited about an upgrade price below $100 for a product that has moved very close to Dreamweaver (a great product that is way out of my price category).

While EW is very powerful when it comes to CSS, there are issues with the upgrade in my opinion. If you upgrade from Frontpage and have used themes, I still haven't figured out how to change or remove the theme. This includes being unable to edit a link list in the theme header. In Frontpage, you fust went to the "tree" of the website and added, removed, or updated the information or pages.IF you like Frontpage then I see no good reason to upgrade. FP is easier to use and great for the non-professional. I sold my registered copy of FP when I bought EWQ and now wish I had not. EW is for the semi-professional and professional webmaster. It isnot user friendly to the newbie. I have 4 webs and can use it, but miss the simplicity of FP 2003.

Frankly, I expect new applications to have more capabilities, not less.

I expect a smooth migration path when I upgrade within a vendor's offerings.

I expect that there will be tools that will help me modify my stuff to take full advantage of the new environment.

All of this is missing in Expression Web, sadly.

I downloaded the beta and ran it. My sites, all seven of them, rendered the same way they had with FrontPage. My business, in addition to websites, is publishing history on CD-ROMs which I sell to genealogists, historians, etc., and the CDs came out the same way in EW as they had in FP. In fact, there seemed to be virtually nothing new about Expression Web except for a new interface to learn.

I figured that the migration aids would be there when I shelled out my $$, and that once I explored all the great things in EW the veil would be lifted from my eyes and I would see the light. So I bought the product, and installed it, and found virtually no change from the beta.

The migration aids were not there. The veil remained solidly in place.

I have a business to run, and I simply do not have time to screw around learning a new interface and losing capabilities I regularly use in order to be using Microsoft's latest offering.

So, I uninstalled EW and reverted to FP 2003. Fortunately I bought the upgrade so I wasn't out a whole lot of money for this experiment.

On a positive note, I found the development team open to inquiries and generally supportive -- this was FAR BETTER than I had ever seen Microsoft perform in this regard, by the way. That openness and supportiveness alone resulted in a two star rating instead of the one star I had originally decided to give the product.

I have been using FrontPage 2003 and decided that Web Expression Web was the next stage in my website building hobby. It was easy to install, and I can still use FrontPage 2003 on my existing websites. No need for FrontPage extensions which will be a plus on one of the server hosts I use. Also bought "Using Microsoft Expression Web" by Jim Cheshire. An excellent book. Still have much to learn, but looks like fun.

Expression Web starts where FrontPage left off allowing you to create Web sites that meet the latest Internet standards. After a few weeks of practicing with EW, I find it is quite user friendly even though it is has so many features. Using EW helps you better understand things like Dynamic Web Templates, Layers, Div tags and Cascading Style Sheets.

Well, I've been using FrontPage for a long time now since it was reasonable priced and it has many features that help manage and design web pages on a lets say "amateur" level. And I completely disagree with reviewers who state that it is not possible to create standards based web pages with FrontPage. That's all I did and they always validated just fine. Now when I found out that Expression Web is out with a punchline "create standards based web pages" I thought I finally get a decent web development tool that supports real standards not only Microsoft's pseudo standards. What a misconception.

As some other reviewers have already mentioned, some essential features that make up a "professional" web development tool have been removed, such as client side includes (aka "include webbot's"), the navigation structure tab including support to create page navigation based on the web site's hierarchy. Another very annoying removal is the missing page preview tab. To see the web page as it would appear in IE, IE has to be launched through the preview function (e.g. F12). The design tab, for example, does not display some dynamic functionality such as a:hover with a background change defined in CSS.

Other essentials that would make up a professional tool are still missing. E.g. designing standards based web pages using CSS and div's requires careful layout of these elements and one would expect guides and a grid to simplify pixel alignment of div's and other items.

It would have almost deserved 0 stars if there wouldn't be some improvements around standards such as DOCTYPE definitions and the nice feature of being able to click on a style tag in code view and get right to the style in the CSS file.

I should have downloaded the trial SW but I guess I was too much of an optimist.

I've been using Expression since CTP1. Feels like FP but it's not...actually produces clean code. If you're transitioning from FP you will find it an easy move. Gone are most of webbot junk that never did work right in FP...like the photo gallery slide show.

Just open your FP designed web with EWD you don't have to "import" it like the other poster says. Sounds like he didn't know how to use FP in the first place.

It's nice, really nice, and the upgrade from FP price is a steal.

MS has a winner here.

I find Expression Web easy to use and actually a learning tool at the same time. Being able to edit CSS easily in Expression Web is one of it strong points.

I highly recommend this software.