Irfan’s Corner on the Web On Mac, Linux, Grid, Virtualization and Software Technology

MS Expression is no Dreamweaver

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I love using Dreamweaver, it's one of the few applications which I have installed in a virtual machine run on my notebook. Unfortunately there is no open source webdesign IDE which comes close to it. The strengths of Dreamweaver are obvious to me: Its not biased to any specific technology it has near complete support for all major server side scripting languages, code collapse, easy CSS layout visualization, great GUI form creator etc.

Expression has most of these things aswell, however it is a product which is biased towards Microsoft technologies, not just biased it doesn't support anything else. The interface is completely revamped (compared to Frontpage), however most of the functionality remains the same, to me Expression is like:

Expression = Frontpage - Frontage (Server) Extensions + ASP.NET 2.0 support + Office 2007 interface (not completely though, it doesn't have any of those new toolbars)

The Interface looks great,

Expression seems to have "Preview in Firefox" support

So will Expression take over Windows web development? No. A lot web development is not done in ASP.NET, have a look at these stats here, php has been running tens of millions of domains deployed in more than a million servers, I can't find up to date ASP.NET statistics, but last time I checked it was not even more than 100,000. So MS is leaving out a huge chunk of web professionals, and Expression is supposed to target Web design professionals? Some people have complained that Expression is a Windows only tool, and a lot of web developers use Mac! I don't think that this is a valid complaint anymore, virtualization has really taken off now, and it doesnt matter if an application is developed for a specific OS, because all can run it. I use openSuse 10.2 as my primary OS, however while in Linux I make use of Office 2007, Dreamweaver etc.

Microsoft has tried to improve Dreamweaver and Expression interoperability. Expression can directly work with DWT templates. Maybe Microsoft is pulling the same trick, Joel Spolsky, ones blogged about adapted by the Excel team to eliminate barriers of entry by allowing seamless interoperability between both leading web development IDEs.

So in conclusion, I can't see any Dreamweaver to Expression migrations any time in the future as nothing genuine is being offered, only those developers who had been using Frontpage (those drones of MS certified people who don't know any alternative technology) will upgrade because Expression is a replacement for Frontpage. However don't write Expression off yet! Microsoft's strategy for software product has always been for the long haul! Launch mediocre products, and then improve them over time until they beat the incumbent leader. Word was no match for WordPerfect, however with gradual improvements over time, WordPerfect is virtually unknown nowadays!