A Taste of Logic : Expression Web

Purchase My Books in the Microsoft Company Store

jamesche — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:18:14 GMT

I received notification today that Microsoft has decided to carry a small number of non-Microsoft Press books in the Microsoft Company Store in Redmond. One of those books will be mine, most likely my latest book on ASP.NET 3.5.

If you're a Microsoft employee or otherwise have access to the Company Store in Redmond, please drop by and buy my book! At this time, the book will not be available at other Microsoft campuses, nor will it will be available on the online Company Store. That may change if this pilot is successful.

Jim

A Train or a Beast

jamesche — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:56:00 GMT

Expression Web is Microsoft's latest web design tool. It should be no surprise to you that we put a lot of effort into making sure that Expression Web supported the design-time elements of ASP.NET 2.0. Doing so has proven to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a lot of ASP.NET developers who have been frustrated by Visual Studio's lackluster designer are excited to have a standards-compliant design tool that supports ASP.NET in the designer. On the other hand, web designers who don't bring a vested interest in ASP.NET to the table quickly begin to feel that something's missing. That "something" is support for writing ASP.NET server-side code, support for using 3rd party controls in the toolbox, etc.

The next version of Visual Studio (code-named "Orcas") will use the designer from Expression Web, so ASP.NET developers will have great new tools inside of Visual Studio. See my earlier post for more information.

When the ramblings of discontent first began over the limited ASP.NET support in Expression Web, I was clinging to the mantra of "designer vs. developer." Expression Web is, after all, a design tool. Therefore, it only makes sense that its development features would be limited. As time has gone by, I've found myself deviating from that position, and it's my love for ASP.NET that is pushing me off of my post.

Expression Web is being adopted (or at least looked at) by a huge number of FrontPage users who are reacting to the warnings that FrontPage is going away. The exodus of FrontPage users is placing a huge number of people smack in front of the ASP.NET train and we have two options available; squash them like pennies or invite them onboard. Unfortunately, the partial implementation of ASP.NET support in Expression Web is turning these early adopters into slivers of copper. (Okay, enough of that analogy.)

Let's be fair. Expression Web is a version 1 product, and features are usually still being fleshed out when version 1 products release. Even so, I think we've missed a real opportunity. One of our shortcomings at Microsoft is that we often don't see the lions chasing us until we feel the warm breath on our neck. In this case, the lion is PHP (coupled with MySQL), and because it's not burdened by a reliance on any particular platform, the lion is flat-out fast. Personally, I think ASP.NET is a much better technology (there's no doubt about it being more feature-rich) and Visual Web Developer makes using ASP.NET easy and cost effective. Even so, many web designers are already using PHP and our goal should be to take very opportunity to move them to a better beast.

What's my point? Primarily, it's to let folks outside of Microsoft know that we do think about such things. After all, you can bet that if an ASP.NET escalation engineer like myself is mulling this over, the product group is way farther down the track. (Geez, there I go with the train analogy again even after I promised to stop. Sorry.) I think that future versions of Expression Web will beef up this feature-set. The release of the next Visual Studio version will also change the landscape because it will be accompanied by a new (and free) release of Visual Web Developer Express and it offers many of the enticing features of Expression Web without any limitations on ASP.NET development.

One thing's for sure; it's a great time to be a web developer!

Orcas - Not just blowing air!

jamesche — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 06:36:00 GMT

I haven't blogged in a long time, partly because I've been very busy with other things, but mostly because I made the mistake of making this a debugging blog when I started it. Little did I know that one of the most prolific technical bloggers the world has ever known had already started a debugging blog. (If you question that label, check out Tess's blog.) So I decided to rename my blog to The Striped Cat and open myself up to any topic I see fit to ramble on about. (After all, who reads this kind of dribble anyway?) This time around, I feel inclined to ramble on about Orcas because it's incredibly cool.

In case you don't know, Orcas is the code-name (y'all hear that. . . we're using code names) for the next version of Visual Studio. For ASP.NET developers, you'll still be using ASP.NET 2.0 with Orcas, but even so, ASP.NET developers will get to experience a great enhancement to Visual Studio because Orcas incorporates the designer from Expression Web, our latest Web design tool.

For years I've listened to ASP.NET developers gripe and moan about the lack of good CSS tools in Visual Studio. Not only that, but code preservation (although greatly improved over the years) isn't as good as it should be. These two major problems (and many others) are solved in a big way with Orcas.

I first started using Expression Web a little over a year ago when I started writing my book, Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web. After using it for a while, I really began to appreciate the power of the CSS tools available in it. All of those great CSS tools have made their way to Visual Studio with the release of Orcas. (For more information and screen shots, see Mikhail's blog.) Not only that, but you'll also see a great improvement in IntelliSense and code preservation.

I recently installed the latest bits to play around with Orcas. (Sorry, you won't be able to see these new enhancements until the February CTP ships next month.) When I first talked to Mikhail about these enhancements, I was in the process of writing a book on Visual Web Developer and Expression Web. Once I had a chance to play around with Orcas, I scrapped that book almost 300 pages into it and started a new book on Orcas. It really is that good and I can't wait to hear from ASP.NET developers using this product next month. You will love it.

You can download the January CTP of Orcas right now, but it's a seven-file download, 6 of which are 700MB in size. If you want the new designer, you'll have to wait for the February CTP version next month. (I know, February CTP in March. We're just trying to be contrary.) If you want a preview of the really cool CSS features you'll get, you can check out my video tutorial that shows you how to use these same features in Expression Web. (View the Basic CSS tutorial.)

Until next time, remember not to smile.