Microsoft ships beta of latest Web site builder (Expression)

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Do you remember Microsoft FrontPage? I do. I was a user of that back before Microsoft owned it (back when it was Vermeer FrontPage). No tool introduced in the 1990s brought about such contentious debates (most serious Web developers avoided it and held their noses with disdain, mostly cause it was famous for changing your HTML that you hand coded).

Me, I didn’t mind that it changed my HTML. I didn’t want to write HTML anyway. I thought the Web should work like Microsoft Word. Why the hell did we need to write all these little codes like <p> and <h3> and <i>?

That’s the way the Web was back in the good old days. You opened up your editor (NotePad) and typed in HTML by hand. Yes, today such a thing seems incredibly stupid (but you can still try it, in WordPress there’s a little button marked “HTML” — click it and then you too can experience what developing Web sites in 1994 was like).

Anyway, I tried all the Web editing tools and found FrontPage was the most interesting because it joined a decent editor with a server that could add cool things to your Web site and take them further than most of us could just by coding by hand.

Anyway, that all explains the past of Microsoft’s newest Web editor, Expression. Microsoft is running away from its FrontPage brand because it was so damaged by the impression that it wasn’t a “serious” Web development tool. I just saw over on Aaron Brethorst’s blog that beta 1 of that has shipped.

Expression, on the other hand, is definitely a serious tool, I got a demo of this before I left Microsoft and it’s quite impressive. One problem, though. I think that the way to publish to the Web is to use a blogging tool like WordPress or Moveable Type, or use a content management tool like Drupal. In such a world Expression doesn’t seem to fit in very well.

But maybe I’m wrong. What do you think? Are you even going to try it? Why or why not?

UPDATE: Aaron just wrote me and said that even with tools like WordPress and Drupal you still need an editor to design the templates and that Expression fits in well here. That’s an awesome point. I’m downloading now.

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

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77 thoughts on “Microsoft ships beta of latest Web site builder (Expression)”

  1. Scoble – You still need a tool to design those pretty MT, WP, or Drupal-based sites. My personal site is entirely based upon MovableType, and I can tell you that hand-editing those templates is neither fun or easy… Of course, if ugly design is still the new beautiful, then I suppose this is moot, right? 😉

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  2. Scoble – You still need a tool to design those pretty MT, WP, or Drupal-based sites. My personal site is entirely based upon MovableType, and I can tell you that hand-editing those templates is neither fun or easy… Of course, if ugly design is still the new beautiful, then I suppose this is moot, right? 😉

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  3. “I think that the way to publish to the Web is to use a blogging tool like WordPress or Moveable Type…” — you are confusing designing and publishing…two different paradigms…use expression (or tool xyz) to design/create/manipulate a template or site design…then maybe use a blogging api or other content-ish tool/paradigm to publish to the web site.

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  4. “I think that the way to publish to the Web is to use a blogging tool like WordPress or Moveable Type…” — you are confusing designing and publishing…two different paradigms…use expression (or tool xyz) to design/create/manipulate a template or site design…then maybe use a blogging api or other content-ish tool/paradigm to publish to the web site.

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  5. Tim: good point, you’re right that I messed that up, I’m trying to clarify it a bit (the integration between tools like Expression and, say, WordPress isn’t very tight cause Microsoft is hoping you’ll just stick with an entirely-Microsoft stack).

    Also do designers typically use tools like this or do they just hand code? Most of the designers I know like hand coding so that they know exactly what they’ll get. It’s best to spend a lot of time on your templates to make sure they really work well everywhere.

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  6. Tim: good point, you’re right that I messed that up, I’m trying to clarify it a bit (the integration between tools like Expression and, say, WordPress isn’t very tight cause Microsoft is hoping you’ll just stick with an entirely-Microsoft stack).

    Also do designers typically use tools like this or do they just hand code? Most of the designers I know like hand coding so that they know exactly what they’ll get. It’s best to spend a lot of time on your templates to make sure they really work well everywhere.

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  7. A couple clarifications:
    1. I don’t work on Expression Web and can’t speak for the team. I’m just an interested bystander.
    2. I don’t believe the tool has built-in support for designing templates for Drupal, MT, WP, or any other CMS, today (i.e. it doesn’t directly understand MT’s custom tags, for instance). But this doesn’t mean you can’t mock up the pages as needed and then introduce the custom CMS tags that are used.

    Cheers,
    Aaron

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  8. A couple clarifications:
    1. I don’t work on Expression Web and can’t speak for the team. I’m just an interested bystander.
    2. I don’t believe the tool has built-in support for designing templates for Drupal, MT, WP, or any other CMS, today (i.e. it doesn’t directly understand MT’s custom tags, for instance). But this doesn’t mean you can’t mock up the pages as needed and then introduce the custom CMS tags that are used.

    Cheers,
    Aaron

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  9. WYSIWYG tools have their place, but rarely in a professional web developer/designers toolbox. Sure handcoding HTML may seem “incredibly stupid” from a blogger or home publishers point of view, but all those MT/WP/Whaever templates have to come from somewhere, and it’s from the hot, sweaty fingers of handcoders that they originally sprout.

    The main problem with Front Page wasn’t it’s nast habit of re-writing code so much as it’s tendency to produce incredibly bloated HTML that didn’t comply to any standards other than Microsoft’s. Show me a site authored in Front Page and I’ll show you a site whose KB size I can reduce by 80% whilst greatly improving ease-of-maintenance, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility to disabled users and SEO.

    There’s a place for these tools, and hopefully Microsoft have significantly improved upon the blight that was Front Page, but they have no real place in any serious web site creation, particularly if it’s commercial.

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  10. WYSIWYG tools have their place, but rarely in a professional web developer/designers toolbox. Sure handcoding HTML may seem “incredibly stupid” from a blogger or home publishers point of view, but all those MT/WP/Whaever templates have to come from somewhere, and it’s from the hot, sweaty fingers of handcoders that they originally sprout.

    The main problem with Front Page wasn’t it’s nast habit of re-writing code so much as it’s tendency to produce incredibly bloated HTML that didn’t comply to any standards other than Microsoft’s. Show me a site authored in Front Page and I’ll show you a site whose KB size I can reduce by 80% whilst greatly improving ease-of-maintenance, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility to disabled users and SEO.

    There’s a place for these tools, and hopefully Microsoft have significantly improved upon the blight that was Front Page, but they have no real place in any serious web site creation, particularly if it’s commercial.

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  11. Oh I loved Frontpage and especially Frontpage Express. The fact that you could do a lot of a mess with FP did not mean that you could not strip it down through the options to build nice and fine code.

    Actually my 10 year old homepage (*cough* I should change that one day, I think I have not touched that in 10 years) was build with it.

    I am still missing some of the features in other editors and will give it a try. 🙂

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  12. Oh I loved Frontpage and especially Frontpage Express. The fact that you could do a lot of a mess with FP did not mean that you could not strip it down through the options to build nice and fine code.

    Actually my 10 year old homepage (*cough* I should change that one day, I think I have not touched that in 10 years) was build with it.

    I am still missing some of the features in other editors and will give it a try. 🙂

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  19. On another related note – I downloaded the tool today – didn’t spend any time on it yet, but I told it to import my WordPress blog – and it did – faithfully – it is represented (without all of the data links, of course) almost perfectly in Expression.

    In the next few days I’ll see how useful it is to actually change my WP templates – but I was just pleased it imported the “look” of my blog so well!

    Rob

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  20. On another related note – I downloaded the tool today – didn’t spend any time on it yet, but I told it to import my WordPress blog – and it did – faithfully – it is represented (without all of the data links, of course) almost perfectly in Expression.

    In the next few days I’ll see how useful it is to actually change my WP templates – but I was just pleased it imported the “look” of my blog so well!

    Rob

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  21. I guess call me an old school web designer then… I still prefer hand coding to this day in TextPad.

    I will admit that with each new version, FrontPage got better and less bloated, but I still never found myself using it as my sole tool of choice. I a lot of times found myself using FrontPage for things like fixing nested tables…but now CSS does all that and more, so no more FrontPage.

    Im sure when Im 80, kids will really get a kick out of my Web Development Seminars….

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  22. I guess call me an old school web designer then… I still prefer hand coding to this day in TextPad.

    I will admit that with each new version, FrontPage got better and less bloated, but I still never found myself using it as my sole tool of choice. I a lot of times found myself using FrontPage for things like fixing nested tables…but now CSS does all that and more, so no more FrontPage.

    Im sure when Im 80, kids will really get a kick out of my Web Development Seminars….

    Like

  25. I feel strongy about two of the Microsoft Expression tools (Graphic Designer and Web Designer). I’m most impressed with Graphic Designer. This tool is awesome! I learn to make new and amazing designs every time I use this tool. It integrates extremely well with a tablet pc as well.

    Web Designer has taken me a little longer to grow fond of, however, I am enjoying this tool and would reccomend it to both techies that prefer to code their html, and to those with a more drag and drop approach.

    Seth
    http://www.inklings-impressions.com

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  26. I feel strongy about two of the Microsoft Expression tools (Graphic Designer and Web Designer). I’m most impressed with Graphic Designer. This tool is awesome! I learn to make new and amazing designs every time I use this tool. It integrates extremely well with a tablet pc as well.

    Web Designer has taken me a little longer to grow fond of, however, I am enjoying this tool and would reccomend it to both techies that prefer to code their html, and to those with a more drag and drop approach.

    Seth
    http://www.inklings-impressions.com

    Like

  31. Brent – you don’t have to be mesmerised by this topic (and you don’t need to ‘dis it either). If it’s not your cup of tea, then wait for the next post (or blog). No reason to add so little to a conversation…

    Not a flame – just friendly advise.

    Rob

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  32. Brent – you don’t have to be mesmerised by this topic (and you don’t need to ‘dis it either). If it’s not your cup of tea, then wait for the next post (or blog). No reason to add so little to a conversation…

    Not a flame – just friendly advise.

    Rob

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  33. hummmm… download let test it.
    open file… crash… something wrong…. reboot and try again.
    new crash… humm direct open ms error.
    15 minuts to open a single html file… let me see clock again. 15 minuts 4 errors, slow… for shure is a MS development.

    Forget it … i use html kit pro, i have no problems , no errors.

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  34. hummmm… download let test it.
    open file… crash… something wrong…. reboot and try again.
    new crash… humm direct open ms error.
    15 minuts to open a single html file… let me see clock again. 15 minuts 4 errors, slow… for shure is a MS development.

    Forget it … i use html kit pro, i have no problems , no errors.

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  35. Only morons use Notepad. Real men use Emacs or vim.

    Dreamweaver and FrontPage were/are infamous because they produced shitty, non-standards compliant HTML – eventually DreamWeaver got much better at this and maybe FrontPage did too. Lack of standards compliance hurts web businesses, tool vendors, and users. Especially the disabled.

    That’s why web developers hated it, Robert. What a short memory you have. Do you not know how hard Zeldman had to fight to get Microsoft, Netscape and the rest of the web clowns of the time to care about standards?

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  36. Only morons use Notepad. Real men use Emacs or vim.

    Dreamweaver and FrontPage were/are infamous because they produced shitty, non-standards compliant HTML – eventually DreamWeaver got much better at this and maybe FrontPage did too. Lack of standards compliance hurts web businesses, tool vendors, and users. Especially the disabled.

    That’s why web developers hated it, Robert. What a short memory you have. Do you not know how hard Zeldman had to fight to get Microsoft, Netscape and the rest of the web clowns of the time to care about standards?

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  37. Warren: sorry, that’s revisionist. That might have been why Zeldman and crew were fighting (actually they were more about the BROWSER part of it) but that wasn’t why everyday Web coders hated these tools (at least in the beginning). Zeldman always was a hand-coder until recently so he didn’t care about the tools (remember, I heard him speak plenty of times and hired him several times to speak at our conferences).

    But, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

    Actually FrontPage did a pretty good job of supporting the Web standards of that time (remember, back then that was before CSS and XHTML and all that).

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  38. Warren: sorry, that’s revisionist. That might have been why Zeldman and crew were fighting (actually they were more about the BROWSER part of it) but that wasn’t why everyday Web coders hated these tools (at least in the beginning). Zeldman always was a hand-coder until recently so he didn’t care about the tools (remember, I heard him speak plenty of times and hired him several times to speak at our conferences).

    But, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

    Actually FrontPage did a pretty good job of supporting the Web standards of that time (remember, back then that was before CSS and XHTML and all that).

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  41. “Actually FrontPage did a pretty good job of supporting the Web standards of that time (remember, back then that was before CSS and XHTML and all that).”

    Are you effin’ high? FrontPage produced slow, bloated pages that barely rendered in Internet Explorer and tripped over their dicks in any other browser. WYSIWYG? Maybe if you had some kind of fast-acting degenerative eye disorder. FrontPage was the site editor equivalent of people sending their e-mails in Word documents.

    Expression sounds decent enough, but it won’t take serious dudes away from Dreamweaver or GoLive and hardcore dudes away from [insert text editor here]. The amateurs? Why bother to dick around in Expression when you can use any number of pre-fab, web-based site and blog builders? Personally, I’m fine with BBEdit.

    Scoble, stick to what you know. It’s clear as day that webdev ain’t it.

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  42. “Actually FrontPage did a pretty good job of supporting the Web standards of that time (remember, back then that was before CSS and XHTML and all that).”

    Are you effin’ high? FrontPage produced slow, bloated pages that barely rendered in Internet Explorer and tripped over their dicks in any other browser. WYSIWYG? Maybe if you had some kind of fast-acting degenerative eye disorder. FrontPage was the site editor equivalent of people sending their e-mails in Word documents.

    Expression sounds decent enough, but it won’t take serious dudes away from Dreamweaver or GoLive and hardcore dudes away from [insert text editor here]. The amateurs? Why bother to dick around in Expression when you can use any number of pre-fab, web-based site and blog builders? Personally, I’m fine with BBEdit.

    Scoble, stick to what you know. It’s clear as day that webdev ain’t it.

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  43. WTF?: >>FrontPage produced slow, bloated pages that barely rendered in Internet Explorer and tripped over their dicks in any other browser.

    Bullshit. I built a whole Netmeeting site that got hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month in it and worked in every browser out there.

    Just because you didn’t know how to use the tool doesn’t mean that it ALWAYS built pages like that.

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  44. WTF?: >>FrontPage produced slow, bloated pages that barely rendered in Internet Explorer and tripped over their dicks in any other browser.

    Bullshit. I built a whole Netmeeting site that got hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month in it and worked in every browser out there.

    Just because you didn’t know how to use the tool doesn’t mean that it ALWAYS built pages like that.

    Like

  45. FrontPage had something of a split personality: street-level consumers could use it html-free and get typically deplorable cookie-cutter results or… somebody who really knew the tool could use it to build high-end Microsoft-based stuff, like for intranets.

    And, funny enough, FrontPage is becoming SharePoint Designer.

    My tool of choice? Notepad++ 🙂

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  46. FrontPage had something of a split personality: street-level consumers could use it html-free and get typically deplorable cookie-cutter results or… somebody who really knew the tool could use it to build high-end Microsoft-based stuff, like for intranets.

    And, funny enough, FrontPage is becoming SharePoint Designer.

    My tool of choice? Notepad++ 🙂

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  47. Is Expression going to be like DreamWeaver in that it will finally use CSS AND keep it separate from the HTML?

    Also, I don’t need any of these multi-$100s programs to do my web design. I’m a purist, give me NotePad, Vi, Vim, Emacs, or whatever, and a Firefox/Flock/Mozilla Browser, and I will be content. These programs are nothing more than text editors with all the codes added anyways. If you got the skill and knowledge, you got power and can save a few extra $$, ^_^.

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  48. Is Expression going to be like DreamWeaver in that it will finally use CSS AND keep it separate from the HTML?

    Also, I don’t need any of these multi-$100s programs to do my web design. I’m a purist, give me NotePad, Vi, Vim, Emacs, or whatever, and a Firefox/Flock/Mozilla Browser, and I will be content. These programs are nothing more than text editors with all the codes added anyways. If you got the skill and knowledge, you got power and can save a few extra $$, ^_^.

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  49. Robert, I completely hated FrontPage with a passion. It just seemed completely non-intuitive to me compared with Dreamweaver.

    Having said that, I’ve been playing with the Visual Web Developer software recently, and if that’s anything to go by Microsoft’s finally got its act together on web development packages.

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  50. Robert, I completely hated FrontPage with a passion. It just seemed completely non-intuitive to me compared with Dreamweaver.

    Having said that, I’ve been playing with the Visual Web Developer software recently, and if that’s anything to go by Microsoft’s finally got its act together on web development packages.

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  51. “Just because you didn’t know how to use the tool doesn’t mean that it ALWAYS built pages like that.”

    Bwahahahahahaha. It’s stunning that you continue with the corporate whoring even after you leave the company. FrontPage was a steaming pile of shit and it was put down for a reason.

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  52. “Just because you didn’t know how to use the tool doesn’t mean that it ALWAYS built pages like that.”

    Bwahahahahahaha. It’s stunning that you continue with the corporate whoring even after you leave the company. FrontPage was a steaming pile of shit and it was put down for a reason.

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  53. WTF? It wasn’t “put down.” It was redesigned and renamed. You have no clue about FrontPage. But, no use arguing with a jerk who doesn’t even use his real name. Have a good one!

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  54. WTF? It wasn’t “put down.” It was redesigned and renamed. You have no clue about FrontPage. But, no use arguing with a jerk who doesn’t even use his real name. Have a good one!

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  55. Simply open up a ‘clean’ HTML file (“page” for you less technical folks) in FrontPage and click on “Save As…” and compare the two. Robert, compliant or not, shitty or not – it DID totally mangle everything with it’s bot crap in the comments. And yes, the stuff does have to download to every browser – thus, bloat.

    The biggest sin of FrontPage was inadvertant – it made everyone believe they could design good looking web pages. (Emphasis: good.)

    Leave content creation to the writers or bloggers. Leave design to the designers. And yes Robert, just about every good designer back then couldn’t stand FrontPage.

    Now, as for Expression…

    “Install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (see below) before installing Expression Web.”

    :-O

    Wow. Why does MS have to do things like this? Every other company in the world can make a professional web design package that, um, actually work standalone.

    From a technical standpoint exactly WHY is .NET required? I know I know, those great widgets. But if I could actually write everything in Notepad – tedious, yes, but possible – than why is it that MS must REQUIRE something like this?

    No thanks. I’ll stick with my 6 year old Visual Interdev when forced to design things on a Windows box.

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  56. Simply open up a ‘clean’ HTML file (“page” for you less technical folks) in FrontPage and click on “Save As…” and compare the two. Robert, compliant or not, shitty or not – it DID totally mangle everything with it’s bot crap in the comments. And yes, the stuff does have to download to every browser – thus, bloat.

    The biggest sin of FrontPage was inadvertant – it made everyone believe they could design good looking web pages. (Emphasis: good.)

    Leave content creation to the writers or bloggers. Leave design to the designers. And yes Robert, just about every good designer back then couldn’t stand FrontPage.

    Now, as for Expression…

    “Install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (see below) before installing Expression Web.”

    :-O

    Wow. Why does MS have to do things like this? Every other company in the world can make a professional web design package that, um, actually work standalone.

    From a technical standpoint exactly WHY is .NET required? I know I know, those great widgets. But if I could actually write everything in Notepad – tedious, yes, but possible – than why is it that MS must REQUIRE something like this?

    No thanks. I’ll stick with my 6 year old Visual Interdev when forced to design things on a Windows box.

    Like

  57. Checked the tutorials of Interactive Designer. Looks like a potential Flash killer and a couple of Adobe lawsuits. 😉

    It would be interesting to see how quickly/if ever websites turn to using XAML instead of HTML…

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  58. Checked the tutorials of Interactive Designer. Looks like a potential Flash killer and a couple of Adobe lawsuits. 😉

    It would be interesting to see how quickly/if ever websites turn to using XAML instead of HTML…

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  59. Actually, Front Page made a pretty big splash when it first launched. I think the biggest problem with the product was that it tried to please two very different audiences – Web pros building large sites and end users putting up pictures of the kids.

    I’ve always preferred HomeSite/CF Studio. While I can use Notepad with the best of them, I’m more productive with an IDE. I have tried using Dreamweaver but am just not a WYSIWYG person. It *is* a much better product now than it was even two years ago and I can see why people like it. Eric Meyer worked with Macromedia on the CSS support and it is impressive how they integrate that into the IDE.

    I’ve also used Front Page when that was the tool my customers used to maintain their site. Once I get templates set up and do a quick training, they can maintain their stuff with a minimum of fuss. It really comes down to using the tools intelligently.

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  60. Actually, Front Page made a pretty big splash when it first launched. I think the biggest problem with the product was that it tried to please two very different audiences – Web pros building large sites and end users putting up pictures of the kids.

    I’ve always preferred HomeSite/CF Studio. While I can use Notepad with the best of them, I’m more productive with an IDE. I have tried using Dreamweaver but am just not a WYSIWYG person. It *is* a much better product now than it was even two years ago and I can see why people like it. Eric Meyer worked with Macromedia on the CSS support and it is impressive how they integrate that into the IDE.

    I’ve also used Front Page when that was the tool my customers used to maintain their site. Once I get templates set up and do a quick training, they can maintain their stuff with a minimum of fuss. It really comes down to using the tools intelligently.

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  61. “Bullshit. I built a whole Netmeeting site that got hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month in it and worked in every browser out there.”

    And it was 80% bigger than necessary due to FrontPage bloat, slowing the browser load time, taking up bandwidth unnecessary, and making the server draw more electricty than otherwise required.

    I can’t believe you called hand coding “incredibly stupid”. Those artists who choose to paint using fine brushes rather than spray paint and rollers are just stupidly clinging to the past in your world, huh?

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  62. “Bullshit. I built a whole Netmeeting site that got hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month in it and worked in every browser out there.”

    And it was 80% bigger than necessary due to FrontPage bloat, slowing the browser load time, taking up bandwidth unnecessary, and making the server draw more electricty than otherwise required.

    I can’t believe you called hand coding “incredibly stupid”. Those artists who choose to paint using fine brushes rather than spray paint and rollers are just stupidly clinging to the past in your world, huh?

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  63. Dan, if you knew how to use the tool your pages weren’t 80% bigger than they needed to be. But I figured out ways to clean up my HTML coming out of the tool.

    Of course I knew how to do that cause I hand coded sites before FrontPage 1.1 (and a variety of other tools) came out.

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  64. Dan, if you knew how to use the tool your pages weren’t 80% bigger than they needed to be. But I figured out ways to clean up my HTML coming out of the tool.

    Of course I knew how to do that cause I hand coded sites before FrontPage 1.1 (and a variety of other tools) came out.

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  65. I have the CTP on my Tablet PC and it is wonderful how it integrates and synchronizes, even with my development IIS site and its FrontPage Extensions. It also does a great job of writing clean HTML. That’s a relief, because the Visual Web Designer Express Edition is a giant step backwards that scared the heck out of me.

    The only thing keeping me away from beta 1 is that it can’t install on a machine with Office 2007 beta 2.

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  66. I have the CTP on my Tablet PC and it is wonderful how it integrates and synchronizes, even with my development IIS site and its FrontPage Extensions. It also does a great job of writing clean HTML. That’s a relief, because the Visual Web Designer Express Edition is a giant step backwards that scared the heck out of me.

    The only thing keeping me away from beta 1 is that it can’t install on a machine with Office 2007 beta 2.

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  67. Dan, if you knew how to use the tool your pages weren’t 80% bigger than they needed to be. But I figured out ways to clean up my HTML coming out of the tool.

    That’s exactly the point for the opposition, in my opinion.

    The time you spent learning how to clean up after front page would have been more productivly spent learning how to hand code proper HTML in the first place. Ditto the time required to learn to use the tool correctly in the first place…why spend days and weeks learning the ideosyncracices of putting out decent code with FP/DW/Expression when you can learn the basics of xHTML in a similair amount of time?

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  68. Dan, if you knew how to use the tool your pages weren’t 80% bigger than they needed to be. But I figured out ways to clean up my HTML coming out of the tool.

    That’s exactly the point for the opposition, in my opinion.

    The time you spent learning how to clean up after front page would have been more productivly spent learning how to hand code proper HTML in the first place. Ditto the time required to learn to use the tool correctly in the first place…why spend days and weeks learning the ideosyncracices of putting out decent code with FP/DW/Expression when you can learn the basics of xHTML in a similair amount of time?

    Like

  69. Daniel: XHTML wasn’t out when I was a FrontPage user. Keep in mind I haven’t used FrontPage since 1998.

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  70. Daniel: XHTML wasn’t out when I was a FrontPage user. Keep in mind I haven’t used FrontPage since 1998.

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  71. I’m glad to hear it 🙂

    My point, inexpertly (OK, drunkenly) expressed, was that WYSIWYG tools require the operator to learn how to work around the weaknesses of the tools and, in the case of mark up languages at least, you’re better of learning the language itself, no matter what flavour of *ML it may be.

    I tried out FP, DW, and a few other packages with smaller market share in my early webdev career, and it was apparent to me (and to almost every other professional web type person I know) that you’re better of learning the roots of the language rather than how a particular tool generates it.

    Once again I’m not saying there’s no place for these applications – I’ve tied my gran up in the basement for weeks but she still refuses to maintain her family photo album in anything other than dreamweaver – but to dismiss other means of generating HTML documents as idiotic is a pretty short sighted view point, in my opinion.

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  72. I’m glad to hear it 🙂

    My point, inexpertly (OK, drunkenly) expressed, was that WYSIWYG tools require the operator to learn how to work around the weaknesses of the tools and, in the case of mark up languages at least, you’re better of learning the language itself, no matter what flavour of *ML it may be.

    I tried out FP, DW, and a few other packages with smaller market share in my early webdev career, and it was apparent to me (and to almost every other professional web type person I know) that you’re better of learning the roots of the language rather than how a particular tool generates it.

    Once again I’m not saying there’s no place for these applications – I’ve tied my gran up in the basement for weeks but she still refuses to maintain her family photo album in anything other than dreamweaver – but to dismiss other means of generating HTML documents as idiotic is a pretty short sighted view point, in my opinion.

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  74. absolutely agree with daniel. dw user here. code view most of the time. i teach web design and pretty much start with notepad. imo, if you want to be a REAL web designer/developer you need to get (i guess “stupid” in scoble’s opinion) your hands on the *ML code. i have not downloaded expression * (can’t find any compelling reason to do so yet and certainly a “must install .net 2.0” is a deterrant).

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  75. absolutely agree with daniel. dw user here. code view most of the time. i teach web design and pretty much start with notepad. imo, if you want to be a REAL web designer/developer you need to get (i guess “stupid” in scoble’s opinion) your hands on the *ML code. i have not downloaded expression * (can’t find any compelling reason to do so yet and certainly a “must install .net 2.0” is a deterrant).

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  76. > Yes, today such a thing seems incredibly stupid (but you can still try it, in WordPress there’s a little button marked “HTML” — click it and then you too can experience what developing Web sites in 1994 was like).

    Call me stupid, but I still prefer hand-coding html where possible. It creates much cleaner html. Actually most of us use templates of some kind when developing web applications. Even creating a WordPress theme will require you to muck in good old html.

    As for WordPress blogging, my preference is to use the plain text view. However with the latest version of improved WYSIWYG editor, I may switch.

    On a different note I am not too fond of drupal myself as it tends to get rather complicated when you try to tweak it , extensively if I may add, to your needs. ModX fits my requirements much better. It is more powerful and yet simpler than Drupal. Have you tried it?

    In any content management system you still need to design the templates in HTML.

    So Expression still has a place for web developers, if not for content writers.

    Does Expression generate clean HTML?

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  77. > Yes, today such a thing seems incredibly stupid (but you can still try it, in WordPress there’s a little button marked “HTML” — click it and then you too can experience what developing Web sites in 1994 was like).

    Call me stupid, but I still prefer hand-coding html where possible. It creates much cleaner html. Actually most of us use templates of some kind when developing web applications. Even creating a WordPress theme will require you to muck in good old html.

    As for WordPress blogging, my preference is to use the plain text view. However with the latest version of improved WYSIWYG editor, I may switch.

    On a different note I am not too fond of drupal myself as it tends to get rather complicated when you try to tweak it , extensively if I may add, to your needs. ModX fits my requirements much better. It is more powerful and yet simpler than Drupal. Have you tried it?

    In any content management system you still need to design the templates in HTML.

    So Expression still has a place for web developers, if not for content writers.

    Does Expression generate clean HTML?

    Like

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