In an interesting change of direction, Microsoft failed to introduce a FrontPage 2007, choosing instead to release a brand-new product aimed at the professional web design market. Now Microsoft find themselves in the unusual position of having a fledgling product competing against an established solution which completely dominates the web page creation arena.

Expression Web is part of Expression Studio, which also includes Expression Design, a graphics tool which focuses on the creation of web interfaces. The full version of Expression Studio also includes Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition. Although Expression Studio is by no means a direct competitor to Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft are clearly aiming to create a solution for professional web designers similar to the one available from Adobe. So, how good is Expression Web and will it enable Microsoft to make serious inroads into Adobe's share of the professional web development market?

The short answer is "Yes". Expression Web is not simply a new version of FrontPage. It does not rely on FrontPage extensions to create functionality. Instead, it offers a professional, standards-compliant web development platform which makes it easy for both inexperienced and seasoned web designers to create accessible web pages using XHML, CSS, XML and JavaScript. It also out-performs Dreamweaver in accurately rendering CSS layouts in the design environment.

It looks as though Expression Web will be a PC-only program, and this may prove to be a problem for Microsoft since a significant number of web designers use Macs in preference to PCs. However, to counter this, Microsoft can count on an equally significant group of users, especially in the corporate sector, who buy Microsoft software as a matter of course because of the way Microsoft programs integrate with one another.

Another potential weakness in Expression Web is that its server-side support is limited to ASP.Net. Dreamweaver offers support for ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, Coldfusion and JSP. This having been said, Dreamweaver's server-side facilities are fairly long in the tooth and have not been significantly upgraded for about five years and there is still no support for ASP.Net 2.0. It could therefore be argued that both Expression Web and Dreamweaver are lacking in the server-side development area.

There are over a million web developers using Adobe Dreamweaver and the program is recognised as the industry-standard in visual web development software. It's maturity in the market place gives the program a huge advantage over Expression Web. Third-party developers have also created hundreds of useful add-ons ("Dreamweaver extensions" ) which provide such features as ecommerce and XML integration to the basic program. Microsoft recognises the importance of add-ons and have given Expression Web similar extensibility but it will be some years before they have any chance of catching up.

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.