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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

I’ve decided to check out the Microsoft Expression Web 4 Upgrade to see what new features it has and how it compares to the previous 3.0 release. First off, it looks pretty much the same as far as the UI goes. When it comes to Microsoft apps that’s a good thing. They have a tendency to jumble up everything and make it more difficult to find the options you’re looking for.

It has the same layout with the Toolbox, Folder list and Properties boxes. It’s actually pretty easy to jump in and straight creating pages – if you know what you’re doing. Like the previous version this is mainly an editor. It’s not a design tool that will help you color pages, select buttons and be "artistic". It doesn’t come with templates, there is no picture gallery tool or site building wizard. If you need that as your base, Expression Web is just going to frustrate you.

So how is it as an editor? Pretty good actually. You can drag and drop items so it makes building pages quite easy. The code editor is easy to read and use and the split screen view is very handy. You can layer objects, edit your CSS files and insert HTML, ASP and PHP controls. Overall it’s a pretty powerful app.

One thing that Microsoft has been touting is the SEO Reporting tool. Before you get too excited, it’s really not that impressive. It makes sure that you have a unique title, keywords and description for the page and then checks to see that your images have Alt Text associated with them. All good practices, but it’s not really that impressive of an SEO tool.

There are a couple of things that are lacking though. One thing I wish the editor would do is Tag Highlighting. For example, in the the Rapid PHP 2010 tool I have (and you also get this in Notepad++) when you click a tag like DIV for example it will highlight the opening and closing tag so you know have them set up correctly. This is extremely useful especially when you text spans more than one screen worth. For some reason Expression Web doesn’t have this, or at least doesn’t have it turned on by default. I can’t find a way to make the editor function this way. That’s pretty disappointing since it’s standard with other apps. Apps that cost much less (free).

The Reports and Hyperlink functions are quite useful though. You can visually see the layout of your site and how the pages relate to each other and you can get statistics on how many style sheet links you have, how many internal and external links and links to dead pages. A nice tool to have to make sure you aren’t sending people off to La La Land.

I do like that Expression will open the entire site rather than just a single page at a time. It seems very unlikely that you would work on a file in isolation like that. Expression handles that quite a bit better than the others in that respect.

It is interesting to note that a lot of the Expression Web functionality is bundled up in Visual Studio 2010. VS2010 isn’t quite as user friendly, but pretty much everything is there. You can edit, format and see the design much like Expression shows it. That is just more of an observation on how Microsoft is merging their products.

Finally, the SuperPreview mode is actually pretty useful. You take a webpage and then load it up in multiple browsers at the same time. You can view IE8 and FF3 next to each other. Or you can view IE7 and IE8 next to each other. You can see alignment issues, see how the graphics layout, check the spacing and get a good idea of how each browser will look. That is definitely a handy feature for cross browser compatibility.

Overall I like this new version, but is it worth the hefty cost to upgrade? If you’re new to the Expression Suite then yes, this is a good investment. If you’re coming from version 3.0 I’m not really sure there are that many compelling new features. You would have to be a pretty hard core coding fool to get your money’s worth out of it. But check it out for yourself, there is a fully functional 60-Day Trial you can download.

Microsoft Expression Studio

This is a pretty bold statement, especially in light of Microsoft selling off Expression Media. They claim they’re committed to photography but yet get rid of one powerful app and bolster the features of another, which very people are probably using. I’m all about free apps, but I don’t know anyone who is using the Live Photo Gallery. There’s a lot of mixed messages coming out of those Redmond guys these days.

Microsoft highlights the following capabilities of its new Windows Live Photo Gallery:

• Auto Adjust - one click that fine-tunes exposure, color balance, angle, and sharpness
• Retouch - remove blemishes, or even entire people
• Batch Editing - do same action to a number of photos at once
• Photo Fuse -  use similar photos to create a perfect picture (eyes closed example)
• Sharing - the ability to publish your photos directly to social media sites, online storage locations, and send via email or chat
• Sync - the ability to have all of your files on the go, as well as synched across all of your PCs
• Slide Shows – in a few clicks, create and share slide shows with transitions and visual effects

Microsoft: Windows is better for photos than a Mac, hands down

Windows 7, why do you disappoint me so?

I upgraded my machine to Windows 7 and I have to say I am completely underwhelmed by it. Based on all the hype I was expecting bells and whistles, clowns and balloons. From where I sit, Windows 7 is the same as Vista with all those same annoying dialogs and poor design issues. Since it’s nearly 2010 the fact you can’t stretch the taskbar across multiple monitors is, well, stupid. Why is it Windows can’t actually open an ISO file? I believe I have more cause to open it to see the files than I do to burn it to a disc. And in what year will MS actually make a Windows Explorer that’s actually worth using? Yet again, the built-in file manager is pitiful!

Just for the record, breadcrumbs really aren’t that cool.

Maybe Win 7 is better with resources and memory management. Right now I can’t say its better at rendering the desktop. Maybe my videocard is weak, but it’s just a desktop I shouldn’t have to have a gaming card just to render some icons on it.

So you may ask if I don’t like it why did I upgrade? Well, after being stuck on other bastard child of the operating system world, Window XP 64-bit, I just couldn’t stand it anymore and even the problematic Win 7 seemed like Nirvana comparatively. Nothing runs on XP64 and it was abandoned right after launch, just like that troubled teen Windows Me. Apps complain relentlessly that they aren’t compatible and finding 64-bit drivers for XP is like finding an honest politician, they just don’t exist.

The only bright spot so far has been the setup, which I will admit is very impressive. It was very quick and all the components were recognized. Of course installing 300+MB of patches right after install was less than thrilling, especially since Win 7 has only been out two months, but I would rather have the patches than my ass hanging out on the web for all to see.

It took less than half the business day to install the OS and reinstall all the apps. That alone is pretty striking. It’s still Vista, but that’s a step up from where I’ve been. However, there is no way this OS is worth the $150 upgrade price.