Microsoft Expression Web Takes On The Mighty Dreamweaver
When Microsoft released Expression Web, a lot of people expected it to be an upgrade to FrontPage 2003. Instead, it turns out to be a very professional web development tool which looks set to be a serious rival to the current market leader, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. It’s interesting to see Microsoft in the role of underdog for a change but how will their new contender fare?
Like Dreamweaver, Expression Web forms part of a software bundle, in this case, Expression Studio. Microsoft were the ones who introduced the concept of software bundles, so no one can accuse them of copying the Adobe Creative Suite. Expression Studio contains a full version of Visual Studio 2005 Standard, Expression Blend, Expression Design, Expression Media and, of course, Expression Web. It’s not as powerful a suite as any of the various combinations of Adobe Creative Suite, but it’s still early days. So, are Microsoft on to a winner here? Could Expression Web ever become a Dreaweaver-killer?
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.
It looks as though Expression Web will be a PC-only program, and this may prove to be a problem for Microsoft since a significant number of web designers use Macs in preference to PCs. However, to counter this, Microsoft can count on an equally significant group of users, especially in the corporate sector, who buy Microsoft software as a matter of course because of the way Microsoft programs integrate with one another.
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.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Expression Web is the sheer size of Dreamweaver’s established market. With over a million installations, Dreamweaver is recognised as the industry-standard in visual web development software. Also, as well as the features of program itself, there are hundreds of Dreamweaver-compatible software add-ons, called “Dreamweaver extensions”, created by third parties and adopted by the Dreamweaver community. Microsoft recognises this and have given Expression Web similar extensibility. However, they have a lot of catching up to do.
In brief, in Expression Web, Microsoft have created a very impressive, professional web development tool which will find a ready market with Microsoft users particularly those who already own FrontPage. However, it’s difficult to see existing Dreamweaver users abandoning Adobe’s equally excellent product any time soon.
Filed under: Software