tools of the trade

Along with the debut of its Vista operating system and latest version of Office 2007, Microsoft has just released a new Web-development program, Expression Web Designer, that will replace FrontPage. The focus of the new Web design program has shifted to standards-based sites that can be instantly validated and CSS-based layout and formatting. The result is clean, compliant code that supports stable Web pages and forms. As part of the CSS tool set, there's the ability to browse the different styles, giving you a look at each before you decide which style to apply. There are also quite a few templates and wizards to help less experienced developers create sites and pages, but the focus for this FrontPage replacement is compliance and a wider variety of professional tools for handling the code. There's a $99 upgrade offer for FrontPage users. Expression Web is part of Microsoft's Expression suite of tools called Studio, which will eventually include three other programs: Expression Blend, Expression Design, and Expression Media. You can sign up for a free trial of Expression Web or any of the other three programs in the suite at www.microsoft.com.