Notice: This is a discussion thread for comments about the SitePoint article, Expression Web – Your New PHP Tool Kit.
Nice article, thanks for your good work with this.
Just use Eclipse, Aptana (based on Eclipse) or Coda. I would roll over before I used a MS development product for PHP.
To my understanding Expression web does not intergrate any type of version control, such as svn, a developers right arm.
Nothing ground breaking here and no sites are using Silverlight. That’s HD DVD in MS terms. Blue-Ray is the standard, it’s called Flash. Even then many folks avoid it.
Like ramprage, I am an Eclipse/Aptana fan but…
I thought this was a great article and it sheds light on a product I wouldn’t have otherwise given a second look. I don’t know if it has any sort of versioning capabilities but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Even basic check in check out versioning has been available in competitor products like Dreamweaver for at least 10 years. If I have the time and a spare computer I might take it for a test drive.
Cheers,
Standards based code editing and Microsoft in the same sentence. Your joking, right??? From the same company that gave us IE 6? Oh yea they should be experts on standards, or how to break every rule, after foisting that hooptie of a browser on the world.
I just had to try this out to see. First Expression Web 3 had a fatal error during install so I had to redo it twice.
Then the first time I tried to run it as I was mousing around the File Menu it crashed. Run again, crash. 3rd time, well you get the idea.
So I’m sure Expression Web 3 produces some magical, pixie dust sprinkled code that would get Tim Berners-Lee and the rest of the w3.org all excited when it runs. Problem is its from Microsoft and it won’t run. So please keep your fairy tales to yourself. Back to trusty old notepad.
Thanks,
MyWebs
Ramprage, I seem to detect some bias in your comments, possibly because you are inventing facts.
- Expression Web does support SCC, but not SVN at this time.
- Many sites use Silverlight, but it is a different market to Flash. Your dinky little web animations are not the market for Silverlight. I am not sure how this is relevant to Expression Web anyway.
Sounds like a personal problem… Like time for a new personal computer 
Thanks for the in depth article
You said that an IDE needs to do a lot to pull you away from your text editor.
I fail to see what makes this IDE any different then dreamweaver or others.
stick to eclipse! It is open source and amazing!
I’m on a Toshiba running 64 bit Ubuntu 9.10 with Eclipse 3.5.1 and the Aptana plugin. Yes, it’s amazing but did you read the article? There are some compelling features that aren’t available in dreameaver or elipse.
For instance the comparison preview feature… You can compare your front end to an array of browsers as well as the original design comp. Also the ability to pull layers out of a PSD without firing up Photoshop.
Had no need for it before. Have no need for it now.
I’ve been using Expression Web 2 for PHP development for the past year or two. It’s my main editor, gives me syntax highlighting, tabs for working with many open files, function definitions as I type, and otherwise stays out of my way. I don’t really use any of the other features, but it’s not unstable and if you do use any of the WYSIWYG stuff, it does produce standards compliant code and can validate the HTML and CSS you write.
It’s also perfectly happy opening my Symfony projects which have some thousands of source files. Eclipse always choked trying to build Intellisense out of that much stuff.
I haven’t given EW3 a try yet. It’s $137 new or $74 to upgrade at Amazon, where Dreamweaver costs $376 or $196.
This program looks really really nice, I am liking the price too I think Ill give it a trial run.
On Mac Coda is probably the only option
A very nice informative and cool thing for you to share with us. I must say I will tell my programmer to take a look at this 
thanks
I’m sticking with dreamweaver even if MS gives me a free copy of expresion web3 I’ll still stick with dreamweaver
Yes Dreamweaver became a standard almost at its inception. I’ve used Dreamweaver since version 2 but recently I’ve been wondering if there isn’t a world beyond that. I’m using Eclipse/Aptana, Visual Web Developer 2008 and I’ll be trying out Coda when my new Mac arrives. What’s holding you so fiercely to Dreamweaver that you wouldn’t try another tool that could be better?
…? Jeez there is no more tool better than dreamweaver and there is no other world beyond that and I ain’t using no Expression web even if Jesus Christ appears before me in a pile of office papers and insist that I should …lol
Oh. So it’s for religious reasons then…
Fair enough 
I started web design with Front Page and graduated to Expression Web. I really like the program. For me, it’s very intuitive. I like the auto-complete and the reporting.
This is my environment. Then i use Eclipse with spring toolkit for Spring/j2ee dev.