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Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. Thoughts?

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urlwolf:
I cannot find any decent reviews.
Is this something like a free dreamweaver?
Does it output crappy html?

Any use for a WYSIWYG html editor?

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/Default.aspx

Curt:
I have not yet produced any output, but I am very impressed with Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition. I made my first homepage with FrontPage 2003, and VWD 2008 Express is a lot easier and much more capable. I do not understand why you would expect it to "output crappy html", but the final version of FrontPage produced okay html code - chubby maybe, but not too fat - and it has been 5 years since then, so maybe they have learned how to do by now? I would expect so.

I'll highly recommend to take the time to wacth the 38 minutes intro video.

f0dder:
Curt: frontpage produces pretty crappy HTML output... at least the versions of FrontPage I've seen. Zillions of unnecessary and redundant tags and stylesheet references - really ugly.

But I do write my HTML stuff with Notepad++, and believe that you should either be doing that or using a CMS system... setting up templates can be done with one of those WYSIWYG tools though, and then cleaned up with a pure text editor afterwards.

mitzevo:
I tried it.. It's not bad (and its code production is pretty clean.. should be in this age..) and pretty stream lined..apart from no decent templates, not even a mention of PHP any where.. i.e., not even a basic .php template.. How pathetic.. even for this free version.. Looks like m$ wants you to use their stuff (as usual).. but very very good for.. free :)

Carol Haynes:
To be fair MS do not promote PHP because they want you to use .NET and ASP etc. which is what all their developments tools are built for.

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