Microsoft Expressions?

[Nala]

Since Microsoft has phased out Frontpage, I'm thinking about purchasing the replacement, Microsoft Expressions. Does anyone have any experience with the new product?

Also, in general would you recommend Microsoft (even if you have used Frontpage but not Expressions) or Dreamweaver?

Finally, how do these products incorporate blogging functionality? BTW, I'm a newbie to building websites.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Nala

Since Microsoft has phased out Frontpage, I'm thinking about purchasing the replacement, Microsoft Expressions. Does anyone have any experience with the new product?

I don't have experience with Expressions... but that's not why I'm replying...

Originally Posted by Nala

Also, in general would you recommend Microsoft (even if you have used Frontpage but not Expressions) or Dreamweaver?

No, I wouldn't. I especially don't recommend Microsoft Frontpage because of several reasons, the first of which being the price, the lack of features that can be found in free tools, and the general inability to read the HTML code when you need to make a real change. I don't recommend Adobe Dreamweaver either, simply because it isn't free, and even though it is very advanced, it is too advanced for people who don't eat, drink, and sleep on HTML.

Originally Posted by Nala

Finally, how do these products incorporate blogging functionality? BTW, I'm a newbie to building websites.

They don't. You install blogging software on your web site in order to have blogging functionality. You can pretend to have a blog using those products, but you wouldn't have any blogging functionality at all.

[Nala]

Thank you, Adam.
So if you don't recommend either Microsoft or Dreamweaver, what would you recommend for a newbie who doesn't know HTML?

[Fortune]

Now, I haven't tried these programs yet so I don't know if they are any good, but I recently purchased a web hosting account with Lunarpages.com and they give away $700 worth of web design software from CoffeeCup. Maybe that is an option.

[Sadhana]

I tinkered with Expression for a little bit back when it was in beta. I remember thinking that it was pretty good. At least, it's much better than FrontPage.

Here is Vitamin's review of the product, if you want to know more.

[Sadhana]

I forgot to mention Visual Web Developer by Microsoft. It's targeted for ASP .NET developers, but it also works well for XHTML/CSS editing.

And it's free!

[da1prophet]

Word around the campfire is that Expressions is pretty good, and *way* better than FrontPage. I sort of go back and forth between GoLive and Dreamweaver. I taught myself HTML on them--there's a learning curve but for me at least its easier than writing the raw code in Notepad. A lot of the really simple web editors, IMO at least, are more trouble than they're worth--it may be easy to get started but you'll soon reach a point where they can't do something you need to, they'll output ugly HTML, and so forth. GoLive and Dreamweaver may be more complex to pick up, but once you get them there's not much in terms of web design that you can't do...

I've downloaded an Expressions trial (they've got a 60 day trial on their website if you want to download it and mess around with it) and I'll post my thoughts once I get to using it...

[Nala]

Thank you, da1prophet. From what I've heard Dreamweaver may be too technical for someone at my novice level. Is GoLive more appropriate for a newbie? BTW, I am looking forward to your thoughts on Expressions.

Right now I am planning on having someone build my site and then updating it on my own. Or, in your opinion, is the building something that is simple enough that I can plan on doing it on my own (time is an issue) and/or something that I should just learn anyway so that I don't run into kinks down the road?

[da1prophet]

Originally Posted by Nala

Thank you, da1prophet. From what I've heard Dreamweaver may be too technical for someone at my novice level. Is GoLive more appropriate for a newbie? BTW, I am looking forward to your thoughts on Expressions.

Right now I am planning on having someone build my site and then updating it on my own. Or, in your opinion, is the building something that is simple enough that I can plan on doing it on my own (time is an issue) and/or something that I should just learn anyway so that I don't run into kinks down the road?

If you can find a web designer that you can trust, who'll do a good job, and won't overcharge you it's probably to your advantage to have them build it and then update it yourself. When I started doing my websites I wasn't in the financial position to hire someone, so I taught myself to do it. At this point I'm just too stubborn to let anyone else do it...

I'd still learn enough about Dreamweaver and/or GoLive to do the updating yourself. Even if you don't want to go to the trouble of learning to build sites from the ground up its helpful how to know how to do small things yourself--say you want to update a graphic or something. It'll save you a lot of headaches doing it yourself, not to mention the money that a web designer will charge you.

As far as Dreamweaver vs. GoLive go, they're pretty similar in how they work so I'm not sure I'd agree that one is more technically oriented than the other.

I'll let you know about Expressions once I start messing around with it--good luck!

[aussieNickuss]

I might just be a Mac fandude but I would seriously recommend you stear clear of any web design package from Microsoft....they can't even make IE right so I wouldnt trust them with a web site builder. I did start learning HTML on frontpage about 6 years ago....it was ok for "visual" development, but the code it generated was rubbish and did not go with web standards. I dont know what its like now...but knowing MS's track record......yep.

Dreamweaver is fantastic if you have the time to learn it. It is overwhelming at first but you can actually learn it very quickly. As for GoLive.....I think that was always more difficult than Dreamweaver, however it did integrate with Photoshop which made for easy image "sliced" pages. As far as I know though, I think Adobe are merging GoLive into Dreamweaver and just selling the one product in their next release, essentially ending GoLive.

Have you considered pre-built content management systems such as Drupal or Joomla? You may need to have someone a little webserver-savvy close by when installing them, but basically they are just an easy to use web based GUI that you can add/edit/delete menus, pages, news, products (e-commerce), blogs etc that appear on a pre-designed or custom template. They are both open source and FREE, so check them out > http://drupal.org/ and http://www.joomla.org/.

There is also a blog specific content management system called WordPress. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm downloading it right now to give it a spin. Its FREE also and is available at http://wordpress.org/.

Those content systems require no to little xhtml/css/php etc. knowledge to setup and use but like I said, it would be best to have a knowlegable person handy to help you upload and install them on your server. Maybe even worth your while to hire a web designer to set one up and design a custom template for you.....probably be a whole lot more economical than hiring a designer to build a whole custom site.

Hope that rant helped in some small way.

[da1prophet]

Well I messed around with Expressions for a few days and was underwhelmed. The biggest gripes I had were typical Microsoft complaints--it started messing with my Outlook installation, for one thing. I don't know that its any easier to use than Dreamweaver and as one of the other posters noted Microsoft isn't exactly known for the quality of code their products produced.

So I uninstalled it, and as a final indignity it messed with my Outlook and other Office settings to the extent that I had to reinstall Office from scratch!