The Expression Web publishing dialog allows multiple publishing destinations. That's why the InfoQuest situation described above, which I believe will become more common with more and more hosts, is such a defining moment. Simply put: it's better than the other solutions I use. The notion of a Web site as a project is most forcefully illustrated by how publishing works in EW. A developer experienced with EW who expands to use other tools will see it immediately and I believe this is why so many EW users are distressed that EW's time is coming to an end. This is a very nuanced distinction, hard to explain. Web sites as projects are poor cousins.ĮW and FrontPage (FP) before it are entirely focused on Web sites. Their project management is structured around that concept. The new tools are very focused on projects that are apps or modules. Visual Studio Code (VSC) does allow multiple instances. The new tools seem to be catering to developers who will spend days or weeks focused on one thing, while I'm bouncing around from client to client while doing new builds simultaneously. Such tools include Rapid PHP and PhpStorm (hereinafter "the new tools"). I am frustrated because the other tools I'm using or evaluating can not run multiple instances or allow multiple projects to be independently loaded. In other words, the default behavior was to allow multiple instances. I recall writing Windows apps where multiple instances could not be allowed (for technical or security reasons) in those cases I needed to write code such that a new instance of the app checked to make sure it was the only instance and shut down if it wasn't. This used to be a de facto behavior of most Windows applications. In my style of work this has always been extraordinarily useful. This simply means that more than one project can be open at the same time, completely independently. Multiple InstancesĪ tremendous strength of EW is the ability to run more than once instance of itself. Now it's time to heap praise upon and otherwise memorialize the features that make EW distinctive in the hopes that other toolmakers will take notice. That's the burying part of this ceremony. If your Web site was built with EW, there is no need for concern it will continue to run fine, forever. The sites built with DWTs will run indefinitely because DWTs don't affect the published HTML. I will convert my own sites so they no longer depend on this useful feature and then, at my leisure, convert client sites as needed. For now the content remains online but I suspect that Microsoft may remove it someday.įortunately, over the past five or so years I've been quietly preparing myself to wiggle free of my key EW lock-in, Dynamic Web Templates (DWTs). Update, - A couple of weeks ago Microsoft closed the Expression Web forum in MSDN. The additional inconvenience of using a third tool to handle bigger publishing chores is enough to push me over the edge. I have been using EW with an external editor (Rapid PHP) and found that level of inconvenience tolerable due to the big improvements in PHP editing, a topic I've written about here before. But it does make it impossible to use EW's publishing system, which means I would have to use an external program like FileZilla for that task. This is good I heartily agree with the decision. I got a surprise when I discovered that InfoQuest has tightened security again and now requires a form of secure FTP that EW cannot handle. The second was a couple of days ago when I relocated a client to my favorite hosting company, InfoQuest. This removal was not devastating per se, but now I realize it was an omen. Those wishing to get a copy of those downloads can find them online with a little patience. Those using Expression Web (EW) were not affected by this because, like me, they kept a copy of the download in a safe place. The first was in June when Microsoft removed the free downloads for the two remaining Expression family products, Web and Design, from its Web site. In the last few months there have been two events that, together, have convinced me the time has come to wean myself off the Web development tool I've been using for two decades, Microsoft Expression Web (nee FrontPage).
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