Microsoft's Web design application, formerly known as "Quartz," is aimed right at Adobe's Dreamweaver.Microsoft today announced the public beta of Expression Web Designer, a new Web design tool formerly known as "Quartz."
The beta version, which Microsoft calls a Community Technology Preview, or CTP, is available for download on Microsoft's Web site.
With this release, Microsoft now offers three applications in its Expression suite that compete in the professional design tools market with leaders such as Adobe Systems and Corel.
The other tools in the Expression suite include Expression Graphic Designer, formerly known as Acrylic, and Expression Interactive Designer, formerly known as Sparkle.
Read our in-depth review of Sparkle, the Expression Interactive Designer.
Expression Web Designer, much like Adobe's Dreamweaver, is a professional development application. It is meant to appeal to both designers and developers and offers tools to create standards-based Web sites using XHTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XML.
"We're entering an era where all browsers will read according to standards, where search engines rank sites better if they're standards-based," said Wayne Smith, product manager for Expression Web Designer. "We did our research; we heard time and time again that standards were important. So we wanted to create a Web design tool that met the needs of the professional Web design community."
Unlike Dreamweaver, Expression Web Designer is Windows-only, but does offer extensive access to ASP.Net controls and integration with Expression Graphic Designer. Expression Web Designer also features "draggable" work palettes that can undock from other work panes.
Expression Web Designer provides extensive HTML, ASP, CSS and FrontPage Server templates, but it does not offer JSP or PHP support. The application offers settings that support all combinations of HTML/XHTML/Strict/Transitional/Frameset and CSS 1.0/2.0/2.1.
Microsoft did not offer details on the length of Expression Web Designer's beta period.
Microsoft first mentioned Expression Web Designer during its annual Professional Developer's Conference in September 2005. It was originally scheduled to be released as a beta in March, according to sources.
Sister product Expression Graphic Designer, which was first announced in June 2005, is still in beta.
Microsoft paused work on some aspects of that software earlier this year until some components of Vista and other "sibling" products—presumably Expression Interactive Designer and Expression Web Designer—could be brought up to speed.
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