Real World Computing

Far from owning the web, Microsoft suddenly looked exposed with its underpowered and standards-flaunting browser and development packages. Drastic action was required, so in late 2006 IE 7 was launched, boasting new standards support. In practice, though, its lack of SVG rendering and still frustratingly incomplete CSS support made for a rather pathetic show. IE remains the most widely used browser, but in the face of a rejuvenated Firefox and Apple's Safari it will never become the all-pervasive web platform that once seemed likely.

Expression of intent

So what of Microsoft's web ambitions? FrontPage's reputation was by now unsalvageable, so it ditched the product for a new alternative called Expression Web. And guess what: its working environment and approach are almost a direct copy of Dreamweaver - strong on markup with split code and design views, HTML colour coding, IntelliSense and so on. Expression Web also avoids all tag extensions, so that sites produced with it are pure XHTML/CSS and fully standards compliant. It even acknowledges that the web can be viewed via different platforms and browsers with its support for browser checking.

The first release of Expression Web is certainly a radical turnabout from FrontPage, but does it go far enough? Unlike Dreamweaver, it fails to provide built-in reference materials for the languages it supports and offers no built-in help to work around browser differences. More importantly, the number of languages it supports is limited, with no PHP, JSP, ColdFusion or even ASP, and no Ajax handling. While Expression Web is a vast improvement on FrontPage, it lags behind Dreamweaver for comprehensive standards support and real-world practice. Apart from its excellent support for Microsoft's latest ASP.NET 2 language, there's no area in which Expression Web can claim to be superior to Dreamweaver. Without some secret weapon, such as Dreamweaver's tight integration with Flash, it's difficult to see Expression Web ever seriously challenging Dreamweaver.

But Microsoft may have just such a secret weapon in XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) - a markup language designed to handle onscreen presentation. A whole range of controls support multimedia, data-binding, interactivity and so on - all the sorts of things for which Flash proves essential in a web context. Currently, Microsoft's XAML support is focused on Expression Blend and producing desktop applications based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), but Microsoft's long-term vision for XAML is much wider and web-based.

But doesn't this sound familiar? Microsoft tries to foist its own format on to the web to split the current consensus around using Flash where necessary to move beyond HTML, then having created a needless division ends up winning - not on merit, but simply as the biggest beast. Such suspicion is justified and it isn't just Flash that Microsoft has in its sights. This time, however, the story has some very notable differences.

To begin with, Microsoft has learnt the importance of embracing open standards. Expression Web already includes compliant support for XHTML and CSS, and in Expression Web 2 we're promised similar support for PHP and Ajax. No doubt Microsoft would prefer everyone to use its technologies, but crucially it isn't trying to force the choice or, worse, trying to twist existing standards to its own purposes. Moreover, while Microsoft will control development of XAML, as Adobe does for Flash, it's a fully documented open standard that Microsoft is actively encouraging others to develop for.

Continued....