Search:

Microsoft Underdog As Expression Web Takes On 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.

Expression Web is part of Expression Studio, which also includes Expression Design, a graphics tool which focuses on the creation of web interfaces. The full version of Expression Studio also includes Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition. Although Expression Studio is by no means a direct competitor to Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft are clearly aiming to create a solution for professional web designers similar to the one available from Adobe. So, how good is Expression Web and will it enable Microsoft to make serious inroads into Adobe's share of the professional web development market?

The truth is, Microsoft being who they are, Adobe had better sit up and take notice. Expression web is not just a revamped version of FrontPage (a product which was clearly no match for Dreamweaver). It offers web designers a fairly complete set of tools for building sites compliant with current standards. It has excellent support for XHTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, ASP.Net and JavaScript. It also shows users a very accurate representation of the web page they are building even without previewing in a browser.

One potential problem which Microsoft will face in attempting to lure users away from Dreamweaver is the fact that Expression Web only runs on PCs. A high proportion of web designers use Apple Mac. Microsoft may find that it's not enough to make Expression Web a little better than Dreamweaver in order to challenge its dominance; they may have to make it a whole lot better!

Another possible problem area in Expression Web is that, on the server-side, it only supports Microsoft's own ASP.Net while Dreameaver offers support for ASP, ASP.Net, Coldfusion, PHP and JSP. However, it is not just Expression Web that has limitations in this department. Dreamweaver's support for ASP.Net and PHP is unimpressive and it has been years since the last upgrade to Dreamweaver's server-side functionality.

There are over a million web developers using Adobe Dreamweaver and the program is recognised as the industry-standard in visual web development software. It's maturity in the market place gives the program a huge advantage over Expression Web. Third-party developers have also created hundreds of useful add-ons ("Dreamweaver extensions" ) which provide such features as ecommerce and XML integration to the basic program. Microsoft recognises the importance of add-ons and have given Expression Web similar extensibility but it will be some years before they have any chance of catching up.

In short, Expression Web is a worthy competitor to Adobe Dreamweaver. Both are aimed at casual as well as professional web designers and developers. Hopefully, the eventual winner of the competition between Microsoft and Adobe will be the increasing number of ordinary people who find themselves thrust into the ever-changing world of web content creation.

Article Source: http://www.dummiesguideto.com

The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses in London and throughout the UK.

Please Rate this Article

Not yet Rated