Summary

Expression Web is part of Microsoft's new Expression suite of products that bring a new, rich set of tools targeted at designers.  Expression Web was specifically created to address the needs of web designers, unlike Visual Web Develop Express, part of the Visual Studio family, which addresses the needs of web developers.  Although Expression Web shares a similar interface to Visual Web Developer express, this new tool offers powerful functionality that a designer desires when creating a web site.   This whitepaper describes the key features of Expression Web and describes specific functionality that Visual Web Developer does not include.

Content

  • Introduction
  • Expression Web Key Features
  • Visual Web Developer Express Key Features
  • Product Feature Comparison Summary

Introduction

Expression Web, part of Microsoft's Expression suite of products, takes the many sides of a designer's creative personality to all new levels. Professional design tools provide a greater flexibility to create sophisticated applications and content.  Expression web delivers a set of features that enable web designers to create compelling designs effortlessly, while also providing compatibility with powerful developer tools to facilitate the development process of the completed site.

Visual Web Developer Express (VWD), part of the Visual Studio family, was designed to address the unique needs of the new Web Developers and offers features that make building dynamic Web applications effortless.  It's a tool that was created to focus on the needs of hobbyists, enthusiasts, and students.

While both products are within the realm of web site and web application creation, the two products target different roles when building web sites. Expression Web has been created for designers to create the look and feel of the site using visual tools to work with technologies like Cascading Style Sheets whereas Visual Web Developer Express) targets developers who add application logic and code.


Expression Web Key Features

Powerful XML/XSLT support 

Expression Web makes it easy to incorporate external data sources so that designers can add live and up-to-date data to the design.  Industry-standard XML data can easily be incorporated into a page in a Data View by simply dragging and dropping from the file project list to the design surface.  After manipulating the data to be shown, powerful, WYSIWYG XSLT design tools offer the ability to style the XML data into a desired format.

Sophisticated CSS-Based Layout

Visual aids make it much easier to generate elegant CSS by offering guides to manipulate positioning, sizing, margins, and padding. The Style Application and Positioning toolbars provide precise control over how and where CSS styles are generated.

Extensive CSS Formatting

Deep support is provided throughout Expression Web to produce, manage, apply, and reuse CSS formatting.  Ranging from high-quality CSS rendering in the design surface,  to IntelliSense and typing aids in the code view, the user is in full control of how styles are created, stored, and deployed.

Unique Split Page View

When creating a web page some edits are better suited to Design View, and others are easier in the Code View. However, there are times when it is preferable to use both.  Split View provides this alternative by splitting the document into two horizontal panes.  It's possible to adjust the size of each window by dragging the splitter between each view.  This is a very useful view unique to Expression Web and provides the designer an opportunity to tweak the Design surface while seeing the change reflected in the Code surface at the exact same time and vice versa.


Visual Web Developer Express Key Features

Building Web Sites

You can build (validate) the current page or your entire web site at any time to help find compile-time errors.  It performs the same compilation tasks that occur when a page is requested in the browser.  However, the resulting object code is not used to run the page.  Building performs tasks, such as the following:

  • Compiles the code in all pages in the site
  • Compiles the code in the App_Code folder
  • Compiles code in the Global.asax file
  • Resolves and, if necessary, compiles any dependent resources
  • Parses the configuration file to look for invalid configuration elements

Database Explorer 

The Database Explorer allows you to connect to a database and view and manipulate its structure and data.  In VWD, the connections are restricted to local and read-only remote connections.  Features include the ability to create/modify/remove/refresh a connection, add a SQL Database, run database objects, working with T-SQL editor, create/modify stored procedures, create/modify user-defined functions and create/modify triggers.

Visual Debugger

Visual Debugger enables the ability to examine code while it is running and includes features that help you debug applications, including the following:

Breakpoints - Breakpoints are places in the code where the debugger will stop the application, allow you to view the current data state of the application and then step through each line of code.

Stepping - Once you have stopped at a breakpoint, you can run the code line by line (known as stepping through the code).  Visual Debugger includes a number of features to help you step through your code, such as iterators that allow you to specify how many times to step through a loop before stopping again.

Data Viewing - Many different options for viewing and tracking data while the application is running are provided.  The visual debugger allows you to modify the data while the application is stopped in break mode, and then continue to run the application with the modified data.

VB/C# IntelliSense

IntelliSense provides an array of features that makes VB/C# language references easily accessible.  When coding, you do not need to leave the Code editor to perform searches on language elements.  You can keep your context, find the information you need, insert language elements directly into your code, and even have IntelliSense complete your typing for you.   


Product Feature Comparison Summary

 

Expression Web

Visual Web Developer Express

 Accessibility  checker

Yes

No

 CSS Support

Powerful design surface tools and CSS Properties Window

Basic CSS support

 IntelliSense

Yes

Yes (including code support)

 Page View

Design, Split, Code

Design, Source (same as "Code")

 User  Experience

Full menu options targeted for web designer

Simplified menu options and defaults targeted for web developer

 Built-in Web
 server

Yes

Yes

 XML Editor  Support

Full XML/XSLT

XML Only

 Debugger

No

Yes

 DB Explorer

No

Yes

For more information

For more information about Expression Web, visit the Microsoft Expression homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/default.mspx

For more information about Visual Web Developer Express, visit the VWD homepage at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vwd/