I've been reading up on web design and programming lately. One of the books that my mom checked out of the library for me (thanks, Mom) was a fairly old book (written in 2007, to be precise) that talked about creating web pages.
The book was written for complete beginners with no coding experience, so instead of teaching the reader how to code with HTML, the book recommended one of two popular WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get", a type of webpage creating software) editors, Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web.
I'd already looked into Adobe Dreamweaver, and, well... let's just say that its price was way too expensive for my limited teenage budget. I expected that Microsoft Expression Web would be similarly priced, but I decided to check it out anyway.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Microsoft stopped producing updates for the Expression software in 2010, and they now release Expression Web 4 to anyone -- for free!
So I went and downloaded the software, and spent some time playing around with it.
Sadly, it's not very good.
On one hand, it will save you a lot of hand-coding time by creating the elements for you. On the other hand, it's really difficult to use.
Trying to move around the elements on the screen is difficult. At first, they refuse to move, then they zip to the other side of the page. Dropping an element in the wrong place will cause it to disappear. Worse, the CSS seems to be faulty. Fixed elements move around in the preview webpage.
I'll give it this, the interface is simple enough, and it has the capacity to create a lot of different elements. But, what with the glitches and problems, I can see why it was discontinued.
It's possible that I just didn't spend enough time trying to learn this software, and I might mess around with it some more. But unless I find out otherwise, I'll have to give this software a mediocre rating.
If you wish to download the software anyway, you can download it for free here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36179
Disclaimer: I am not being paid to write this review.
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