Review: Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web
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by Anand Narayanaswamy
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Inside the Book and Recommendations

The book contains 8 parts with over 35 chapters. Part 1 provides a brief tour of the features included with Expression Web. The chapters in Part 2 help you to create, publish and manage different kinds of websites such as Disk based, FTP and HTTP. You will also learn how to generate reports, importing websites and the usage of personal web packages. Part 3 includes a bunch of chapters and it mainly examines the creation and management of different types of pages and content. You will learn the usage of Intellisense, Context Menus, Code Snippets, Quick Tag Tools, Tables, Frames, Forms, Graphics, Multimedia and Find & Replace. The author also demonstrates the configuration of various options available in page editor.

Page 4 and 5 examines the usage of CSS, website optimization using built-in accessibility checker and also some of the compatibility features. Part 6 discusses some of the advanced topics such as usage of dynamic web templates, interactive buttons, behaviors, layers and much more. This part also includes a brief overview of client side scripting and creation and usage of VBA Macros.

Part 7 delves deep into the various aspects involved with the development of ASP.NET 2.0 applications. The author provides a detailed overview of standard ASP.NET 2.0, Navigation, Master Pages and User controls. Towards the end of the part, you will learn the development of a login system and usage of form validation controls. The final chapter examines the usage of ASP.NET web parts in a detailed way. Part 8 deserves special mention as the author has covered the aspects involved with database management with the help of various data source controls.

The book concludes with an appendix which provides an overview of the usage of Visual Web Developer Express Edition and some of the emerging technologies such as Ajax, Ruby on Rails. I feel the author should provide some coverage of PHP as well. The author also examines ecommerce related aspects and lists some of the useful resources available on the web for further learning.

Each chapter includes step-by-step instructions, tips, notes, caution hints, complete source code and jumps to related chapters with page numbers. The author has done a great job presenting the subject matter in a lucid manner. The book includes a CD which contains sample source files, full version of popular logo creator software, menu builder and PDF version of the book. I feel that these softwares will be a sure bonus for all those who purchase the book.

I would suggest the author provides a trial version of Expression Web as well on the CD so that readers can quickly install the software and get the most from the book. The author maintains a website for the purpose of this book. In addition to useful articles, the site includes a long list of errors and their corrections.

An interesting point to note is that the book is written based on the final release of Expression Web and the copy which I reviewed and is currently available from the publisher is the second print of the first edition. Hence, most of the errata that you see on the above website are oriented for those readers who have access to the first print of the book.


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User Comments

Title: Thanks   
Name: Anand N
Date: 2007-12-03 4:57:09 AM
Comment:
Hi,

Thanks for the criticism. I've now made some modifications to the initial paragraph. I hope the confusion is now cleared.

Regards,
Anand Narayanaswamy
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1847190871/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1847190871
Title: wow   
Name: mike
Date: 2007-12-01 6:15:38 PM
Comment:
This is a horrible article. You knew it would be when it started out with the author saying they loved to use frontpage... seriously... FRONTPAGE?

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