WebAssist have produced a PDF about CSS: The How and the Why. However I feel it is sadly lacking because it does not include Expression Web. It starts with the theme of a tenth anniversary for WebAssist and for Dreamweaver plus the push for web standards with CSS in particular in mind. I have another tenth anniversary to add to the mix . Mine!
It has been ten years this year since I launched my first FrontPage help and Resources Website, with much biting of fingers, exorbitant domain and hosting fees. (That’s where I learnt you do not buy your domain from your host and that when you have a name in mind buy the domain right away, I waited too long and the .com was taken). I had actually started the concept of the site on free hosting in 1997, and moved through a variety of free hosting and a friends sub domain till I took the plunge. (Yes if you look at the whois for AccessFP you will see it does not begin in 1999 however that only applies if you stay with the same domain host, and trust me I was not staying with my first domain host, I then moved it to a co.uk company but I found Namecheap suited me rather better and cheaper and where I remain to this day.)
The concept was, that I would write down anything and everything I found out about FrontPage and how to use the program, so that I would have a store of information for myself in one handy place, and I could share it with everyone else too. I continued to do that with all the versions of FrontPage and along the way making other sites for FrontPage Tips, FrontPage Ezine, FrontPage Ebooks, FrontPage Addons Then Microsoft decided to bring out a Web Editor that complied with standards – Microsoft Expression Web. Having been through the full gauntlet of using the bots in FrontPage, and learning how to implement better methods, from version to version and from year to year, I had started to apply these as I started to use FrontPage 2000, and progressed tenfold by the time it came to FrontPage 2003. So that when Expression Web beta came out, I wanted to know what it could do for me that FrontPage 2003 could not. Not only did it have a CSS Editor similar to TopStyle, which truth to tell I used in a limited way, EW has a feature that warns me when my code has wonks in it, and it tells where to go to help me work out what I am doing wrong. You have to set Expression Web up however to give you the best possible responses to that end I wrote a Free Setting up Expression Web Ebook for both versions.
During this time I obtained Dreamweaver 1.2 and found it to be extremely hard to use, but I did write an article on how to use FrontPage and Dreamweaver together.
So why am I rambling on? The thing is, Expression Web meets today’s Web standards and what’s more for the woman in the street aka myself, who grew with FrontPage from the old free version of FrontPage Express through from 98, 2000, 2002 and 2003 to Expression 1.0 and 2.0, whom though a Microsoft MVP – FrontPage (Five year anniversary this January btw) is still just a housewife. I regard helping people with Expression Web still just my hobby, something I enjoy very much. If I can grow and learn and ask Why? So can others. Dreamweaver is beyond most people ‘in the street’, I dare say nowadays I could get to grips with it because of the experience I’ve had over the last ten years with editors, however the point I am trying to make is, is that Expression Web is for the masses. Some old time FrontPage users don’t think so, that’s because they are still stuck in using the old bots, I was there, I did that, merely moving away from the most insidious bot of the lot the Navigation bot, upon which a website hinges. (Menus are the mainstay of a site) I moved to FrontPage Page Includes in FrontPage 2000 for my navigation and stopped receiving complaints about my hard to navigate menus in my rather large accessfp.net site.
Expression Web meets standards, WebAssist even have a few addons for it. If your going to apply to the people that NEED to learn more about standards you do not push Dreamweaver at them, you include Expression Web in your assessment!
So lets start off the next Ten Years right, include a web editor like Microsoft Expression Web when your exhorting Web Standards to your audience. Not only is it cheaper than so called ‘professional’ web editors such as DreamWeaver, it is much much easier to use. However make no mistake, it is ALWAYS YOU that makes the website not the editor, you are the one in control.
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