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Microsoft Expression Web Designer CTP 1 Screenshots

I don't have time to write up much of a review this evening (nor have I explored much), but I thought I'd post some screen shots.

My first impression is that it is a better Frontpage. It knows about styles a LOT more than Frontpage though and makes them a first class citizen. Additionally, it's taken the approach of a development tool with a by-default on-screen property editor for HTML elements (and styles).

Uh .. this wasn't a good start though ... (click on the screen shots for a larger view)

Excuse me, a reboot?

After rebooting, the application starts with a clean slate:

Easy enough to edit. The selected element has a little marker on the upper left corner for easy access to the properties, etc.

Reasonable style editor -- nothing too fancy. The needed attributes are all there:

Standard color picker -- HTML colors only from this dialog:

Inline styles are easy to build. I just set a few properties in the CSS Properties panel. The inline style feature reminds me of Word 2003's ability to show document styles:

I copied and applied the inline style to a named style, "alert":

In looking a bit more at the style editor -- they have a nice explanation of the CSS box model using an image:

There are built in accessibility checks:

... and also browser compatibility checks. Only flavors of IE and XHTML are listed:

Nice table formatting features (this pane is available when editing a table):

There's a whole set of Data related menu options and tasks panes that aren't immediately obvious (so non-obvious that they remain disabled -- I don't see any easy way of activating them.)

All for now.

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