Microsoft Expression Web 2 Beta - What’s New?
March 12th, 2008 Posted in .Net, Expression Web, Silverlight, msdnUPDATE: This post was originally written for the Beta version of Expression Web 2. However, the content still applies to the full version that has now been released.
By now you have probably heard that the beta of version 2 of Microsoft’s web design tool Expression Web has just been released. I am a big fan of Expression Web, having used it from the beta of version 1, and like many people I have been eagerly awaiting the release of version 2. So, was it worth the wait?
Lets break down some of the new and updated features in Expression Web 2;
PHP Support
If you develop using PHP (which I don’t), then the new version of Expression Web certainly delivers alot for you! The app now supports PHP intellisense and syntax highlighting, which will likely bring all the PHP developers who liked the look of Expression Web 1, but not the lack of PHP support, into the community.
But thats not all. Expression Web 2 now supports the previewing of PHP sites locally, without the need for a seperately installed web server. I know how much that features helps me all the time when I’m using Expression for creating ASP.Net sites and no doubt this will be the same for PHP developers.
ASP.Net & AJAX Controls
One of the biggest gripes I had (and I wasn’t alone) with Expression Web 1 was the lack of AJAX support. When Expression Web was originally released, I automatically assumed that the standard AJAX controls (update panel, update progress, script manager etc.) would be available. Not so. This meant that I along with countless other developers and designers had to partially create our pages in Expression and then switch to Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer to work with AJAX. Then, once you had these controls in your page, you recieved errors in design view in Expression becuase it didnt support the controls.
Luckily, the Expression Web team listened to the feedback and they have fixed this one too, and there is now full support for the standard ASP.Net Ajax controls to simply drag and drop them into your page.
Also, with regards to ASP.Net controls, you can now include custom controls in your web site, as well as a couple of new ASP.Net data controls, namely the ListView and DataPager control for when you are working with .Net 3.5.
Silverlight 1.0, Windows Media & Flash
You can now drop your Silverlight 1.0 applications straight into your site using Expression Web 2. Further to this, there is now support to also embed Windows Media and Flash into your site as well as Flash preview in design view!
Photoshop Support
Another new feature, which I know I am going to end up using all the time, is the newly added support for importing from photoshop. Expression Web 2 will import any PSD (Photoshop) file and convert it to an optimised image file format for your site. Not only that, but it has in-built support for photoshop layers, allowing you to decide to show or hide particular layers from the psd file. Finally, once you have your optimised image, you can go back and edit it in photoshop from with Expression and it will update your picture in your site accordingly.
In Summary
Good job Microsoft!
Above are just four of the main new features that are part of the new Expression Web 2 Beta, a couple of the others which I won’t go into now are;
- Improved FTP Publishing
- Enhanced CSS styling and validation
- Byte Order Mark Options (one of the little niggles with the first Expression Web was the lack of support for BOM, leading to encoding errors, especially with applications like WordPress).
If you want to try Expression Web 2 Beta (I would definantely recommend it), go and download the beta here.
I would also suggest checking out the Expression Web Team Blog for news and updates regarding the app.
Tags: AJAX, ASP.Net, Expression Web, web design
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