Expression
Web V3

A big surprise is that the install of xWeb3 includes Expression Design V3, Expression Encoder V3 and Expression Encoder Screen Capture V3. Together these make a compelling package for the web designer/developer. So much to learn, so little time ....!

Between V1 and V2 EW moved from the 'Office' look and feel to the grey themed user interface (UI). With V3 it moves to a black and grey theme similar to the other Expression family applications.

The jury's out on this and many users may prefer something lighter and with greater contrast.

Screenshot (Click to close if it's too large for your screen).

SuperPreview is now integrated with EW and allows preview with IE6, IE7-8, IE8 and Firefox, if it's installed on your system.

Snapshot is brand new and is effectively a SuperPreview window in a Toolbox tab which can be floated right out of the EW application if you wish, even off to a second screen. Best of all, it's updated as you modify the page design and save it. Cool.

All the panels and toolboxes can now be individually pinned or collapsed and even floated right outside the application. There are also 'autohide all panels' and 'reset workspace' options.

Screenshot

Several of the toolbars we're familiar with in V1 and V2 have been changed and have new icons and functions. One completely new toolbar is the 'Code View' bar which has a variety of functions: Bookmarks for marking lines in code (not to be confused with html anchors); tag and block selection tools, 'insert comment' buttons etc.

Screenshot

Sadly the ability to customise toolbars (and create macros) has been lost, hopefully temporarily.

The FTP client has been completely redesigned and gets rid of most if not all of the old gremlins.

It opens up to 10 multiple connections for speed; stores named connection settings and allows multiple settings for the same ip address; multiple settings for the same site; stores HTTP (FrontPage) settings (which V2 didn't) and will accept the pipe character for IIS7 usernames. The improvement in speed is definitely noticeable and welcome.

Screenshot

With V3 EW now has integration with VS Team System, allowing teams of developers and designers to work together. This isn't something I need as a solo developer but I will be trying it out sometime in the future.

The Media Toolbox in V3 allows the addition of Silverlight movies and DeepZoom content. For Silverlight, content is encoded with Expression Encoder on the fly.

Screenshot

The current upgrade details are somewhat confused. For V3 itself the qualifying products are:

• Any Microsoft® Expression product
• Any Adobe Creative Suite product
• Any Microsoft® Office product (includes FrontPage and SharePoint Designer)

For the full Expression Studio the qualifying products are:

• Any Microsoft® Expression product
• Any Adobe Creative Suite product
• Microsoft® Visual Studio 2005 or later

The Microsft Expression Site

Review of V3 by Cheryl Wise

Expression Web 3 by Pat Geary

This is Expression Web 3.0 by Morten Rand-Hendriksen