In a recent three part article series, user experience expert Shane Morris showed us the basics of designing a Microsoft Silverlight application using Expression Blend. In today’s article, our newest author, Tatham Oddie, introduces us to Expression Blend’s sister product, Expression Web, and gives us the broad strokes on its markup and styling features within the context of web standards.
Tatham begins by pointing out that Expression Web is not dependent on Microsoft’s server-side products, and thus well worth an investigation whether you’re using HTML, ASP.NET, or PHP. He then sings the praises of building towards web standards, and mentions some benefits of doing so (faster loading with CSS layouts, for example).
As we move on we’ll see how important it is to work out which standard you want to target before jumping into the code, and how Expression Web is all about enabling that process. It’s smart HTML IntelliSense, in-built ‘Compatibility Checker,’ and HTML-styled ‘Find and Replace’ function all make web standards that much simpler.
We’ve got a quiz for you to tackle, sponsored by Microsoft, so why not give it a go once you’ve read the article?
Andrew Gardner
