devi's blog

This month, I had the opportunity to speak to students at a couple of engineering colleges. I spoke about essential skills they wouldn’t learn in engineering college – hard to teach and hard to quantify soft skills such as collaboration, customer...

I have transitioned into a new role. For the latest on Expression, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/expression

Microsoft Expression Web is now available for purchase (as of Dec 4 th , 2006) for $299 US. Microsoft FrontPage customers can upgrade for US $99. For full pricing, availability, and new information about the product, please visit http://www.microsoft...

New Expression Web Designer demo/training videos are now available on http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/web_designer/demos.mspx?v=wd_layout

Great article by Marius Bancila Getting Acquainted With The Microsoft Expression Family CodeGuru - 6/9/2006 See an overview presentation on the three tools from the Microsoft Expression family: Expression Graphic Designer, Expression Interactive...

We are pleased to present the very first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Expression Web Designer. To use ASP.NET-based features in Expression Web Designer CTP1, you need to download the Microsoft .NET Framework (see link below). To uninstall...

Microsoft has posted videos from all sessions at Mix06. These include demos of Expression Web Designer among other cool demonstrations and keynotes. http://sessions.mix06.com/ http://blog.mix06.com/virtualmix/ Lynda Weinman & Wayne Smith...

After nearly a decade of innovations, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006. But we won’t stop supporting the product. Nor are we ignoring the needs of our existing FrontPage customers. Four new products will meet their diverse needs as well as...

Rich versus Reach – We know that the richer a website, the poorer its reach. The Holy Grail for all websites of course is attaining the max value for (Rich) x (Reach) i.e. Maximum richness combined with maximum reach. For the sake of discussion...

One key facet of designing a great user experience on a website is paying attention to the website's 'conversion rates'. Conversion rate is the rate at which users on a website perform a desired action. Reading Jesse James Garret’s book on User Experience...

I am compiling a list of schools that teach User Interface design. Can you please send me the name of a school that offers courses in User Interface design at the Bachelors and Master's level? thanks

I think most of us are convinced that conformance to web standards is a good thing. Professional designers will learn about web standards on the job but students have to be taught about web standards by their respective schools. To efficiently teach all...

Last week we unveiled plans for two new products – Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Expression Web Designer. Expression Web Designer is focused on the needs of professional Web designers seeking to build high-quality, standards...

The first Community Technology Preview for Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer is now available online. This release is accompanied by the fourth preview of Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer. Designers can now save graphics as XAML code for...

Brian Goldfarb , my colleague on the ASP.NET team recently attended a web design conference. One of the things that stood out in his report was the following data: · Response time limits: · 0.1 seconds. Limit for having a user feel that the system...

The W3Schools site reports that more computers are using a display resolution of 1024x768 pixels or higher. 53% users had 1024x768 in Jan 2005 but the number rose to 55% by July 2005. As a web designer, what resolution do you use as the target to optimize...

I was wondering how I would explain to a designer when to use CSS versus XSL? It’s not enough to say that CSS is for styling HTML while XSL is for styling XML. XML can be styled by both CSS and XSL. One major difference of course is that XML can be...

Prior to IE6, browsers built in non-standard rendering, without conforming to W3C recommendations With wider acceptance of standards, browsers began to operate in two modes – a ‘quirky’ mode called Quirks mode and a ‘standards’ mode. The former was used...

Program Manager - Microsoft Expression "Quartz Web Designer" Do you want to create the next generation of tools for professional web designers? Do you want to empower professional designers to create compelling user experiences? We are looking for...

Test Manager - Microsoft Expression "Quartz Web Designer" Do you want to lead the test team for the next generation of web authoring tools? Do you want to empower professional designers to create compelling web experiences? We are looking for a “hands...

Software Design Engineer - Microsoft Expression "Quartz Web Designer" Do you want to create the next generation of tools for professional web designers? Do you want to empower professional designers to create compelling user experiences? We are looking...

I was wondering why PNG has not managed to knock-out GIF images. The PNG home page offered an excellent summary of the reasons. For those still wondering why we should be bothered about PNG, here is an executive summary: The W3C has had a recommendation...

Why do I blog? To get customer input on features How will readers benefit from my blog? Readers will get a channel for providing direct feedback to the Microsoft Expression Quartz program management team I also use my blog as an...

I downloaded the IE Developer Toolbar beta a few minutes ago. It is very cool. Lots of goodies... My favorite tools so far are: the ability to outline table cells and the quick validators Download the toolbar

I typed click orange button in my search bar to see how many sites point to a button by its color. I was disappointed to see several results. Sec 508 of the United States Access Board recommends that all web pages shall be designed so that all information...