Okay, I mess with computers some.  My first computer back in the early eighties had a whole 2k of memory, and stored programming  in a tape player. I've been through basic, EzDos, Win 3.1 and most flavors of Windows since. Standing pat at XP, though, and have an old laptop I've converted over to Ubuntu Linux.

Up until this winter this site, now in it's tenth year (!) was originally built and had been maintained with MS Front Page. This winter I downloaded the trial version of the new MS standards/CSS based web software, Expression Web. Then after a while I bought it. The Hillwoman site has been rebuilt in EW. So what do I think?

First let me say that my love/hate relationship with FP (Front Page) was more love than hate. I've owned the versions from '97, 2000, and 2003. The original site was built with FP, and I was able to teach myself how to build and maintain a website with it. In the years since I've taught several people how to build and maintain their own sites with FP, in some of those cases that training taking place over a single intensive 'boot camp' weekend. So FP was like an occasionally bad-mannered friend.

But the writing was on the wall. FP 3003 was the last version of FP we'd ever see. Support for it is going to stop sometime soon, and at some later point supposedly (and this is less likely) support for the FP extensions that gave some extra functionality to pages written in it will be phased out. Why did I change now? If I was going to change the winter was the time to do it. Plus, this was Microsoft. At this point users of any version of FP can upgrade to EW for under a hundred bucks. Full version? More than two hundred. How long would that offer stand?

So, was it worth it?
Yeah, I suppose it was. Pages written with EW adhere much better to W3 standards, rendering less idiosyncratic code EW can easily help put together active server pages. Most of all, EW offers full support of CSS, or cascading style sheets. FP's support was weak. It also is very good at dynamic web templates.

So why is that a good thing?
CSS allows the page author a degree of precision and control that can be addictive. CSS, especially used in conjunction with DWTs, means the look of a site can be changed quickly and easily. This site uses a template I built for all the interior pages. EW helps police accessibility and compatibility issues.
But it is harder to learn, and demands that you learn more html. Habits picked up in FP don't always work well with EW.

If you have changed over to EW, or are thinking about it, here are two places you can check out:
http://www.by-expression.com has useful resources and forums. The other is
http://www.wellesleyisland.net/Buried/brainfizz That's a sort of online notebook of problems and solutions I've encountered messing with EW.
-Troll out.