While hearing the announcement in PDC ’05 for MS Expression and Visual Studio (Orcas) set of web designer IDEs and playing with Office 12, I had mixed reactions. The positive was Expression and Orcas going full throttle with supporting XHTML and other web standards, at the same time introducing awesome new features that makes web development easy. My dissappointed was for lack of no such new standards support with the popular MS Web Designer product – MS Frontpage. I have been a fan of Frontpage even before MS bought the product and had built several websites using it. But over the last few years I was forced to switch to Visual Studio and other 3rd Party products as Frontpage was stagnating. Also MS was confusing with two product streams – both aimed at doing Website Development.
Today all my fears and criticism was put to rest with the Announcement of Sharepoint Designer 2007 replacing MS Frontpage. Sharepoint Designer will be supporting all web standards including XHTML and full CSS compliance. In the same press release MS has clarified the position and the roles played by this new product and Expression Web Designer.
May MS Frontpage’s soul RIP (Rest in Place)
Today MS also announced the final naming for Office “12” (Codename) as MS Office 2007 and the packaging, pricing of Office 2007. Thank god, they didn’t name it “Office Vista” :-)