[whatwg] Microsoft Expression Web

[James Graham]

Mike Schinkel wrote:
> Microsoft released Expression Web yesterday:
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/expression-web/features.mspx
> 
> The narrator for their video for "Standards-based Web Sites" says "XHTML
> builds upon the HTML standard that allows a larger percentage of browsers to
> properly parse and display your document."

That sentence is highly misleading. "XHTML" has nothing to do with allowing "a 
larger percentage of browsers to properly parse and display your document"; the 
fact that the product seems to support using a subset of CSS that specific 
groups browsers render interoperably, and the fact it some built in validity 
checking are much more likely to be useful in that regard.

> I'm wondering if you guys seeing Expression Web as a Good Thing(tm) for the
> web, or a Bad Thing(tm) for the web?

I suspect it's just a thing. Without using it, but assuming they ate their own 
dog food, it doesn't look like it enforces validity (or even well-formedness) 
[1]. But maybe the fact that it has the ability to flag errors will cause some 
developers who are hooked on the Microsoft koolaid to fix problems they 
otherwise wouldn't have bothered with.

[1] 
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fproducts%2Fexpression%2Fen%2Fexpression-web%2Ffeatures.mspx

-- 
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead