I think Microsoft misses the subtle UI things that make a web designer or web developer's day easier. I am re-evaluating the products in Microsoft Expression Studio 2 this weekend:
- Expression Web 2
- Expression Blend 2
- Expression Design 2
- Expression Media 2
- Expression Encoder 2
I just mentioned the fact that Microsoft Expression Design 2 is missing some ever important bitmap tools and is not a replacement for Adobe Fireworks let alone Adobe Photoshop.
And, although this is probably more of a nit-pick, who on Earth designed the FTP interface you find in Expression Web 2?
Why isn't the FTP Explorer a TreeView with collapsible folders so that I can see the entire directory structure at a glance without having to navigate in and out of folders? Am I missing a setting somewhere? I know this is the same ugly FTP Interface that is in Visual Studio 2005, but I dare not want to look to see if it still exists in Visual Studio 2008. Quite frankly, I don't deploy and publish websites like this anyway. I use a proper build process, etc. However, somebody is probably using this FTP interface to publish their sites and this is way behind the times.
Again, I am using an old copy of Adobe Dreamweaver from the Macromedia days, and it's interface for publishing files is a sweet looking treeview that makes the experience wonderful. Coda, which is a Mac web development tool I mentioned earlier for $79, uses a TreeView to view and publish web pages:
Expression Web 2 is the only web development tool that I know of that uses this old-style navigation of your web site such that you cannot see all the pages you want via a TreeView. I realize this is a bit of a nit-pick, but it drives me crazy. Thankfully I don't need to use it, but you might want to fix this in Expression Web 3.