|
 By
Dale Farris, Reviews Coordinator
Golden Triangle PC Club
July 2007
Program Overview
Expression Studio is Microsoft's newest tool used for web site creation
and it completely replaces Microsoft's prior html editor program, FrontPage. Customers experienced with FrontPage
who may be interested in new versions of FrontPage will now have to begin
working with Expression.
When Microsoft decided to not upgrade FrontPage, this represented a major
shift toward new web development tools. For all FrontPage customers, now
they must address whether they use Microsoft's SharePoint services. If
they do, then Microsoft recommends these customers work with the Microsoft
SharePoint Designer. If not, then Microsoft recommends these customers
work with Expression Web.
Microsoft has of course been working on the development of these tools for
a long time. During this development process, earlier information on the tools
referred to the tools with names different from these final retail monikers.
Expression Web was previously called Expression Web Designer, Expression
Blend was previously called Expression Interactive Designer, and
Expression Design was referred to as Expression Graphic Designer.
Expression Media is a new addition to the Microsoft Expression family of
products introduced to the public on December 4th 2006. These names are
the official and final product names.
From Microsoft's web site we learn the following:
What Are These New Tools?
The Microsoft Office and Server & Tools teams proudly announce the
introduction of two great new tools for application building and Web
authoring in 2006:
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007:
Automate your business processes and build efficient applications on top
of the SharePoint platform, and tailor your SharePoint site to your needs
in an IT-managed environment.
Microsoft Expression Web:
Take advantage of the best of dynamic Web site design, enabling you to
design, develop, and maintain exceptional standards-based Web sites.
When Were These Made Available to the Public?
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Expression Web are partially based on
FrontPage technologies and were launched in the second half of 2006.
Which Tool Is For You?
Use Office SharePoint Designer 2007 if you are a solution creator and
content author working using SharePoint technologies. Office SharePoint
Designer 2007 will enable information workers to develop applications and
solutions on top of the SharePoint platform to enable organizational
agility, business process automation, and get the full value of Microsoft
Office applications on the SharePoint platform.
Use Expression Web if you are a professional Web designer. It is a
professional design tool to create sophisticated standards-based Web sites
that deliver compelling user experiences. Expression Web is targeted at
designers who are building broad reach HTML Web sites.
What Happened To FrontPage?
After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage
was discontinued in late 2006. Microsoft will continue to serve the
diverse needs of their existing FrontPage customers with the introduction
of two brand-new application building and Web authoring tools using the
latest technologies: Office SharePoint Designer 2007 for the enterprise
information workers and Expression Web for the professional Web designer.
Microsoft Expression
Microsoft Expression is a suite of tools for professional designers
building web and Windows client applications and rich media content.
The Microsoft Expression tools actually consist of various different web
development tools that can be separately acquired, or collectively
purchased in the Expression Studio application. The Expression tool set
consists of the following applications:
Expression Web
Expression Blend
Expression Design
Expression Media
Media Reader
Media Encoder
Microsoft Expression Studio takes your creative possibilities to a new
level. The professional design tools and innovative technologies in
Expression Studio give you the flexibility and freedom to bring your
vision to reality—whether you are designing standards-based Web sites,
rich user experiences on the desktop, or managing digital assets and
content.
Note that Microsoft Expression Studio also includes Visual Studio 2005
Standard Edition.
Expression Studio Overview
Expression Studio is a suite of tools for creative designers that gives
you the freedom to bring your vision to reality and boosts developer
collaboration in the delivery of rich user experiences for the Web,
Windows Vista applications and beyond. Expression Studio is now an
essential part of the overall workflow for adding compelling user
interfaces to the underlying power of the Microsoft technology platform.
The Expression Studio tools include:
Expression Web
A professional design tool to create modern, standards-based sites
which deliver superior quality on the Web.
Features
Reduce complexity and ease data integration by using powerful design tools
and task panes to quickly incorporate XML data. Seamlessly integrate Web
design and development teams with Expression Web and Visual Studio's
superior support for XML, ASP.NET and XHTML. Beautiful Inside and Out
Unleash your creative ideas and bring your Web sites to life with
sophisticated CSS design features. Visual designers, specialized task
panes, and tool bars give you precise control of page layout and
formatting. Passionate about Standards
Build dynamic, interactive pages that harness the power of the Web to
deliver superior quality. Built-in support for today's modern Web
standards makes it easy to optimize your sites for accessibility and
cross-browser compatibility.
Expression Blend
The professional design tool to create engaging, Web-connected, user
experiences for Windows.
Features
Get involved with the new wave of next-generation applications that blend
the best of the Web and the desktop. Design cutting-edge user interfaces
and collaborate with developers to bring these stunning new types of
applications to life. Art, Meet Science
Think of it as your virtual playground. Mix design elements such as video,
vector art, high quality text, animation, pixel images, and 3D content
with a full toolbox of advanced controls and containers to create
engaging, cinematic user interfaces. Go Beyond the Browser
Give your users something better-better performance, better usability,
better experiences. Now your designs can break out of the browser to
leverage the full power of the desktop.
Expression Design
A professional illustration and graphic design tool that lets you build
compelling elements for both Web and desktop application user interfaces.
Features
Expand your portfolio and collaborate with others who are defining the
next generation of software applications. Expression Design is the perfect
companion to Expression Blend, letting you quickly build sophisticated
vector assets. Then seamlessly transfer — by way of XAML — your graphics
to your Expression Blend projects. Designed for Design
Unleash your creativity with innovative vector drawing tools and
non-destructive effects that you can apply to either vector or imported
bitmapped images. Apply both hard-edged and organic strokes while
maintaining the flexibility of vector paths. Expression Design has been
built from the ground up for designers by designers. Your Vision,
Uncompromised
Don't let your design degenerate when it's handed off to someone else.
Now, you can be confident that the look-and-feel — such as a corporate
identity or user interface elements — will be maintained all the way to
the final product. Build your assets in Expression Design, export them as
XAML, and give them life with Expression Blend's interactive features.
Expression Media
A professional asset management tool to visually catalog and organize
all your digital assets for effortless retrieval and presentation.
Features
Imagine how much more you'd get done if you could just find what you're
looking for. Expression Media makes digital asset management easy—just
drag and drop to import more than 100 different media formats, including
digital RAW files. Even when your originals are offline, Expression
Media's visual catalogs allow you to browse, search, and annotate your
assets. Your Workflow Enhanced
Handle lots of files, fast, with the professional's choice. Rename,
convert, or tag hundreds of files at a time with sophisticated batch
processing; or use powerful search features to instantly find and retrieve
your digital media assets. Edit images and keep track of your changes with
version control, while folder watching keeps your catalogs up to date.
Presentation is Everything
Impress your audience with slide shows, videos, and Web galleries. When
it's time to deliver, Expression Media can export your assets in exactly
the format and size your clients need, with dozens of professionally
designed presentation templates. With Expression Media Encoder, you can
convert and publish video to reach a broad, cross-platform audience.
Recommendations
With Expression, Microsoft has dramatically changed their approach to
their html editor software, for so long known as FrontPage. In the early
days of FrontPage, even novices to html coding could manage to figure out
how to take advantage of the FrontPage interface and tools. However, since
the early FrontPage days, web site development has made great strides and
advances in web page complexity have outpaced what FrontPage could do.
Also, FrontPage has not necessarily been the html editor of choice
for seasoned web site developers well versed in html coding and the many
new multimedia tools that have now become so common in web sites. The use
of cascading style sheets (CSS), streaming audio and streaming video, the
use of Flash or other animation tools, the beginnings of XHTML, and many
other exciting, dynamic advances in web sites have created a need for web
development tools that greatly exceed what FrontPage offered. Microsoft
has of course recognized these many new developments with the release of
their brand new lineup of html tools in their Expression line of
applications.
These new Expression tools represent Microsoft's strong attempt to compete
with other web development tools, such as Adobe's Dreamweaver (formerly a
Macromedia product) and Adobe's GoLive tools. In addition, as you would
expect, as web site development becomes more and more dynamic, this means
the creation of the content at these sites has also become more complex,
and the result of these developments is even more complex web site
development tools. With Expression, Microsoft now has a suite of tools
that while it strongly competes with Adobe's products, is also now more of
a challenge to learn. With the high degree of complexity of today's
modern, cutting-edge web sites, learning how to create these high end
sites has now become something more appropriate for students in intensive
learning environments, or professionals working on teams that help one
another with the various components of their site. While there are of course
extensive tutorials and books available on learning Expression, as well as
the other tools, these also have become as correspondingly more complex as
has the software.
Microsoft's Expression Web
program places Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XML, and other industry
standards at the core of its site design and management strategy. While
some vestiges of the former FrontPage Web-design application remain,
particularly in Expression Web's templates, the program is as close as
Microsoft could get to a completely new product, and it adheres to the new
Web standards closer than many competitor's products.
From a developer's perspective, Expression feels much more grown-up than
FrontPage. While the program still shields Web designers from much of the
code underlying their pages, the resulting sites should meet all Web
design and accessibility standards. The trade-off for all the added
functionality is the hours of training the program requires for
non-coders, even with its many built-in CSS and XML helpers.
Expression Web is the first release in Microsoft's Expression Studio, a
suite of programs for creative professionals that Microsoft thinks will
give Adobe's industry-leading Creative Suite a run for its money. The
other 3 members of the Studio include Expression Blend, which combines
desktop and Web application development and includes Visual Studio
Standard, Expression Media, which manages files and workflows, and
Expression Design, which lets you create interface graphics (available
only as part of the Expression Studio package, which includes all of the
apps).
The benefits of CSS for Web design are undeniable: Separating the content
on your site's pages from the navigation, color schemes, and other design
elements makes updating the site fast and simple. While you could develop
and publish a site the old-fashioned way in Expression Web, CSS is the
default for every new page and site you create, whether manually or from
one of the program's many templates.
Expression Web goes to great pains to make CSS as approachable as
possible. For example, when you choose a style, you see the attributes you
can use for that style in a drop-down menu. The IntelliSense function lets
you type just a letter or two to select options, and you can drag small
pieces of code called "snippets" from one of the program's many palettes
directly onto your page to add navigation elements, form fields, or other
components.
Even with all this help, making the switch to CSS takes quite a bit of
training. People migrating to this program from FrontPage should be
prepared to set aside a day or two to get up to speed.
Expression Web's reliance on Microsoft's ASP.NET 2.0 framework brings it
into the Visual Studio family of desktop application development tools.
This lets an organization combine its Web and program-development efforts.
A more welcome feature for many designers is Expression Web's support for
XML and Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), which
permits you to drag and drop links to dynamic XML data into your pages and
format them easily for presentation on the Web. Your average, everyday
personal or small business site may not require XML support today, but as
with CSS four or five years ago, it is inevitable. You will likely be
posting some kind of XML data in your pages before too long, if you aren't
already.
Despite a few lingering traces of old FrontPage features (such as the
spinning-globe icon you see as files transfer), Expression Web is a giant
step up from that program, and an appealing upgrade for any FrontPage
users who want to convert their sites to CSS and XML.
Bottom Line Recommendation
Microsoft FrontPage was the first HTML editor program that began to open
up the web development business to many people. While the Office suite
applications do support HTML file formats, web page coders long ago
learned to begin and end work on all web pages in a dedicated HTML editor
program, such as FrontPage.
Now, however, web site development has literally taken off and has become
a process more appropriate for formally trained professionals. As other
companies released high-end, complex software to allow users to take
advantage of the many dynamic developments in web site development,
Microsoft's FrontPage continued to well serve the needs of novices in web
site development. The release of the new Expression family of tools has
taken over FrontPage and now represents Microsoft's efforts to compete
with these other more complex applications.
For those still brand new to html editing or web page development, I
suggest they not begin with Expression, and instead find other less
complex html editors to begin their web site development skills.
Microsoft's Expression family of tools now provide developers the tools
they need in creating their dynamic sites, and Expression will well serve
the needs of students in formal classes learning how to create cutting
edge web sites.
My own personal experience with Expression is relatively recent, since the
tool has only been available for a few months. However, since I have also
had the opportunity to work with GoLive, and less extensively, Dreamweaver,
I notice that in Expression, Microsoft has really ramped up the power of
Expression, making it a viable contender for web development tool of
choice for professionals. Expression presents a totally different
interface than FrontPage, something not unknown and not intimidating to
experienced Dreamweaver or GoLive professionals. However, Expression will
possibly intimidate those brand new to web site development. Expression
now assumes users have at least a basic understanding of the many new
tools used in today's dynamic web sites, and will allow you to incorporate
these many exciting tools in the design of your site using Expression.
Price
The estimated retail prices for the United States in US dollars are as
follows:
$599 - Expression Studio
$499 - Expression
Blend
$299 - Expression
Web
$299 - Expression Media
Expression Design is only available as part of the Expression Studio.
Prices for international markets will vary, and all prices are subject to
change
Expression Studio System Configuration Requirements
Windows
1Ghz processor with MMX or equivalent memory
Windows XP (SP 2), Vista
1.5GB free hard disk space
1GB RAM
256MB DirectX 9 video card
1024 x 768 monitor resolution with 24-bit color
QuickTime 7.1.3 or later
DVD-ROM drive
Apple Macintosh
PowerPC or Intel Core Memory processor
Mac OS X version 10.4
20MB free hard disk space
512MB RAM
DVD-ROM drive
QuickTime 7.1.3 or later
Monitor set to millions of colors
Contact
Order Online at
Microsoft Corporation
www.shop.microsoft.com
www.microsoft.com/expression
You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.
|
Microsoft Expression Studio