Is Microsoft Expression Web A Threat Adobe Dreamweaver CS4

March 20, 2009

By system

In an interesting change of direction, Microsoft failed to introduce a FrontPage 2007, choosing instead to release a brand-new product aimed at the professional web design market. Now Microsoft find themselves in the unusual position of having a fledgling product competing against an established solution which completely dominates the web page creation arena.

Just as Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 is part of the Adobe Creative Suite so Expression Web forms part of Expression Studio, a group of programs aimed at equipping web designers with all the tools they need to design and build web sites. Expression Studio comprises Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media. (As a bonus, it also includes Visual Studio 2005 Standard.) So, should Adobe be quaking in their boots or just grinning smugly; how good is Microsoft’s new offering?

The truth is, Microsoft being who they are, Adobe had better sit up and take notice. Expression web is not just a revamped version of FrontPage (a product which was clearly no match for Dreamweaver). It offers web designers a fairly complete set of tools for building sites compliant with current standards. It has excellent support for XHTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, ASP.Net and JavaScript. It also shows users a very accurate representation of the web page they are building even without previewing in a browser.

One potential problem which Microsoft will face in attempting to lure users away from Dreamweaver is the fact that Expression Web only runs on PCs. A high proportion of web designers use Apple Mac. Microsoft may find that it’s not enough to make Expression Web a little better than Dreamweaver in order to challenge its dominance; they may have to make it a whole lot better!

Both Dreamweaver and Expression Web allow developers to visually generate server-side code. However, both programs have limitations in this department. In the case of Dreamweaver, support for ASP.Net and PHP is fairly limited and the overall server-side functionality has not been enhanced for several years. In the case of Expression Web, only ASP.Net is supported; there is no support for PHP, ColdFusion or JSP.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Expression Web is the sheer size of Dreamweaver’s established market. With over a million installations, Dreamweaver is recognised as the industry-standard in visual web development software. Also, as well as the features of program itself, there are hundreds of Dreamweaver-compatible software add-ons, called “Dreamweaver extensions”, created by third parties and adopted by the Dreamweaver community. Microsoft recognises this and have given Expression Web similar extensibility. However, they have a lot of catching up to do.

In brief, in Expression Web, Microsoft have created a very impressive, professional web development tool which will find a ready market with Microsoft users particularly those who already own FrontPage. However, it’s difficult to see existing Dreamweaver users abandoning Adobe’s equally excellent product any time soon.

The author is a trainer and developer with TrainingCompany.Com, an independent computer training company offering Dreamweaver CS4 Training Courses in London and throughout the UK.

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