.::Expression Web vs Dreamweaver
Microsoft's Expression Web verses Adobe's Dreamweaver.
Updated 09/05/2007
The contenders: Expression Web and Dreamweaver MXSummary.
First, both programs are top notch web design tools. Picking one for your web design needs comes down to what you want and need to do with your web site. Dreamweaver is the most flexible program supporting a wide variety of web languages such as ASP, PHP, JSP and CMF. Expression Web is easier to learn, particularly if you are coming form FrontPage, Visual Studio or you are familiar with other Microsoft office programs.
For the last 9 years Dreamweaver has dominated the Professional web design market and FrontPage has lead the way in the beginner to Intermediated "amateur" design market. Microsoft has made a huge shift with it's release of Expression Web. Make no mistake, this is not just an upgraded FrontPage tool, it is a serious design tool, targeted at the the Professional designer.
Pros and Cons
Dreamweaver.Pros
Dreamweaver has dominated the profession web design market for years. It is readily accepted as the standard (mind share).
Dreamweaver has far more support for web programming languages (although this tends to be weak other than ColdFusion).
Dreamweaver integrates with and has Flash and Fireworks specific features.
Dreamweaver is integrated with PhotoShop /Flash.
Support for MAC.
Good supply of templates.
It's relatively bug free.
Cons
Unless Dreamweaver is completely redesigned, it is at end of life. It is already doing things it was never intended to do.
Dreamweaver has grown up with the web, that means it is a mess with all the legacy support.
Dreamweaver is almost twice the cost of Expression. Dreamweaver does not support asp.net 2.0.
Dreamweaver has a large learning curve.
Finding errors in your HTML and CSS has to be done manually.
Other than Adobe's family of products Dreamweaver does not integrate well with other programs.
Expression Web
Pros
Relatively easy to learn, particularly if your coming from Visual Studio, Office or FrontPage.
This is a new program that is not bogged down by all that legacy html support Dreamweaver is stuck with, so right from the start your doing XHTM 1.1 and CSS 2.1.
Expression will not allow you to use "bad" code. **Update it does, but it then tells you its bad.
CSS support is excellent. This has become my default choice as it far easier to us than Topstyle and Style Master.
ASP.net support is good (it could be better). Support for Classic ASP is basic.
Expression integrates well with other web design and scripting tools including Dreamweaver (no small feat as Dreamweaver has been trying to do this for years with marginal success).
Has superior task pane usage and code view it great with linked files and css.
Cons
Few templates (although open source strict XHTML templates can be used with no problems).
No dynamic script templates, i.e. Blogs, CMC, BB.
ASP.net only (although you can build ASP pages in design view). Having no support for PHP really makes me question whether MS seriously wants to win over professional web designers or just wants to promote its (less than stellar performance) ASP.net.
Bad rep, just or not, FrontPage gave MS a bad rep in the web design community that's not going to be overcome easy.
Depending on your point of view Microsoft's decision to kill support for FrontPages server extensions can either be a blessing or a nightmare! In my case it's a little of both. If your website has FrontPage generated forms and uses FrontPage components you better move quick to replace them. Some time next year??? there will come a time when your forms and components will stop working! I recommend using PHP scripts if your not going invest time in learning ASP.net If you decided to use Classic ASP be aware how Microsoft treated It's FrontPages users, there will come a day when support for Classic ASP will end.
If you want to test your websites on your local host and have a Classic ASP Sharpoint site your out of luck. You can view a site there but you can't create a site or open a site via http://localhost.
There are some bugs that really annoy me, such as the some toolbar shortcuts not doing what's excepted. Most of the legacy types components like the standard bar can write bad code, i.e.. insert it into your page then underline it in red to let you know it's bad....IntelliSense at work! How about just wrapping the "whatever" in a span tag and create a new inline style or class? If your building static pages Expression Web can open Dreamweaver DWT (Dynamic Web Templates), but Dreamweaver can't open Expression Templates. DWT in Expression Web is a bit buggy just as the CSS is - I don't care how new the software is this is a Microsoft product, not a small developer! - Features like this this should work flawlessly. That said I can live with above stuff, but the biggest problem I have with Expression Web is the extreme lag in typing text in design view. Its so bad I type almost everything in code view.