Expression Web

Have you tried Microsoft Expression Web 2?
It's wonderful! It produces standard code (not as FrontPage), supports PHP and a lot of wonderful things like Dreamweaver, but what you see on the WYSWYG editor works A LOT better than the dreamweaver one. I'm thinkiing on purchasing it. anybody has experience with this version 2?

I have - I hate it myself..but then I probably hate all clunky MS software. I have a huge silverlight project to do in this turd pile, and I'm tired of it already. (by the way this is from an artist's perspective)

Amusingly, when I go to the Microsoft Expression Web 2 features page, I get a runtime error in my browser. An encouraging start.

I've tried it, although I can't remember if it was version 1 or 2.

The thing I didn't like about it was the HUGE amount of duplicate CSS code it creates as it was not intelligent enough to re-use or indeed update itself. So I found myself spending far to much time fixing the CSS code.

Perhaps I was missing an option or perhaps this is fixed in V2?

I was initially impressed with the much better source creation output over frontpage but the whole masses of CSS put me right off.

This is one of the things that works very well on the version I'm using. On dreamweaver I got much more CSS problems. I've done some minor changes to the BLIde website to check the expression demo, and I'm finding it great. Not sure if I'll run on any problems later on, but now it looks promising. Additionally, the WYWYG editor looks the same on internet explorer and on firefox (I always had issues with Dreamweaver).

I hated dreamweaver for WYSIWYG CSS stuff, much preferred Golive which is now discontinued since adobe bought DW. I will have to look at MS Expression see if that's the new ticket :)

I liked fractal design expression for vector art, not sure why MS bought that and called a bunch of web stuff expression. Prefered it over Adobe illustrator by some considerable margin. 3dsmax is quicker and easier than adobe illustrator for 2D vector art. I often use that to do vector art and save as ai and use illustrator for the last color steps.

I love it... it's on my to-buy list. However, originally I purchased EW1 with an intention to upgrade to EW2, but Microsoft had an annoying "post this bit of paper to the US to get your upgrade" requirement, so in frustration I got a refund for EW1. Ironically, I lost about as much money in the refund process to Australian dollars as what it would have cost to post the silly bit of paper in.

Amazing annoyingly dim-witted of MS, but it's a good program.

On a side note- the developers of EW can't write a website or forum to save their lives.

NotePad - you can't go much wrong with that ;-)

You can when you need to check over hundreds of links :)

(yes, I know there are other programs which can check sites, but then it's not technically just using notepad)