When Microsoft released Expression Web, a lot of people expected it to be an upgrade to FrontPage 2003. Instead, it turns out to be a very professional web development tool which looks set to be a serious rival to the current market leader, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. It’s interesting to see Microsoft in the role of underdog for a change but how will their new contender fare?

Just as Dreamweaver 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.

Dreamweaver’s relative maturity in the market place gives it a huge advantage. There are over a million web developers using the program. It is perceived as the industry standard for web page creation. As well as the program itself, third-party developers have also created hundreds of useful add-ons (”Dreamweaver extensions” ) which offer such enhanced features as ecommerce and security. Although Expression Web has similar support for add-ons, it will be some years before they significantly enhance the functionality of the basic program.

In short, Expression Web is a worthy competitor to Adobe Dreamweaver. Both are aimed at casual as well as professional web designers and developers. Hopefully, the eventual winner of the competition between Microsoft and Adobe will be the increasing number of ordinary people who find themselves thrust into the ever-changing world of web content creation.

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