Successors of Microsoft FrontPage
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Microsoft FrontPage 2003 is set to be superseded by two stand-alone applications – Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Expression Web Designer. Both software are slated to be released in the second half of 2006, as part of the full Microsoft Office 2007 line-up. The upcoming pair is partially based on FrontPage 2003. While independent of each other, the two can be used together by a team of professionals working on a project to achieve best results.
Microsoft SharePoint Designer
SharePoint Designer is meant to be used by business professionals in building SharePoint-based applications and designing SharePoint websites. With it, people can create websites and workflows built with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. For better team productivity and efficiency, the application comes with MS Windows SharePoint Services Application Templates, which can be customized and extended.
Microsoft SharePoint Designer uses a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that allows the deployment of interactive business solutions without having to write code. Professionals can use SharePoint Designer’s tools to easily read and write data from XML files and SQL databases (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server). Workflow applications are also painless with drop-down lists and checkboxes, while Microsoft IntelliSense technologies help the user do away with errors when writing ASP.NET, CSS, and XHTML tags.
Today, ASP.NET is one of web developers’ top choices for Web application platforms. Because SharePoint Designer offers inherent support for ASP.NET, web developers will have faster and easier deployment times in building sophisticated and dynamic web apps.
A demo version of Microsoft SharePoint Designer can be found here.
Microsoft Expression Web Designer
As SharePoint Designer’s partner, Microsoft Expression Web Designer is a next-generation application that will allow web design professionals to create full-blown, dynamic web sites. What’s great about these sites is that they’re not only sophisticated, but standards-based, too.
Expression Web Designer allows advanced CSS features such as visual designers, tool bars, and specialized task panes that give control of the web page layout and formatting to the user. Websites can be optimized for cross-browser compatibility, as well as Web standards validation.
Similar to SharePoint Designer, Expression Web Designer employs deep support for XML, ASP.NET, and XHTML. The application also allows easy integration of data (e.g. XML files) into the project.
A demo version of Microsoft Expression Web Designer can be found here.
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