Microsoft Wants Us to Express, er, Expression Ourselves

Have you seen this? It's Microsoft's Front Page replacement, Expression Web (orignally Expression Web Designer the name was shortened between beta & final release). That link is to Microsoft's page on the subject, so it is all sunshine and flowers.

Other articles on the topic (1, 2, 3) offer different perspectives, but all of them seem to agree that it looks like Microsoft is setting up to square off against Adobe, and may just have a shot at the prize.

I'll admit, I use Front Page for my website, primarily because what graphics work I did in a former life was desktop publishing, all GUI and friendly, and html is a pain. I can do it, my much (ab)used copy of QUE's "HTML Quick Reference" in hand, but I don't like doing or dealing with code, so my site was hand-coded by someone else. I tweak it periodically using my overpriced MS software that, no doubt, messes up the code so badly a code jockey would be hard pressed to make sense of it.

I've played with NVu, the Open Source website editor, and had okay luck with it. But it was a bit clunky to me, trying to be more Dreamweaver than Front Page, I think, and falling into a shadowy place in between that was not user-friendly to a GUI girl like me.

I'm off to see what it will cost me to make the switch, since, much as I like open source, I like easy, too, and Expression Web, from what I've read, is likely to be that for someone like me.

PS - Hopefully the new standards features will help eliminate the time-consuming cross-browser testing for new sites and site tweaks that Front Page users have to do currently to make sure their site plays nice with all the other kids on the web.