Apress Foundations of Microsoft Expression Web May 2007

This book is about more than just Microsoft Expression Web. For most people, a web editor is a means to an end—that end being a website that establishes a web presence. My goal in writing this book is for you to be able to use Expression Web to do more than just establish a presence: my hope is that you will be able to use Expression Web to create a website that fulfills the site owner’s goals. The days of being able to create a website that only works in one dominant web browser or on Windows-based computers are gone. Today, a website must look good and function properly in a variety of web browsers running on Windows and Macs. In addition, many people are using other devices such as game consoles, PDAs, and cell phones to access the Internet. Your website must function in each of these. This is what the term “cross browser” means. Web standards are what make it possible for your cross-browser website to work on the wide variety of devices and browsers out there.

What Is Expression Web?

Expression Web is a new web editor from Microsoft built with web standards and cross-browser output as its primary focuses. Unlike older web editors, Expression Web was not compelled to work around the limitations of earlier versions with proprietary browser output and bloated code. Instead, Microsoft has created a modern web editor that meets the needs of today’s Web. Web 2.0 sites are frequently updated and standards compliant, and employ user-friendly interfaces that provide a clear, well-organized, and visually appealing site. Expression Web was designed to create standards-complaint websites out of the box, while at the same time providing tools to help effectively manage the look and feel of your website. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Dynamic Web Templates (DWT), and ASP.NET Master Pages are the foundation for creating and managing your website in Expression Web. Expression Web assists you in creating standards-complaint sites by writing the code to the specification of your choice, but it will not rewrite your code if you choose to use browser-specific code.