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Before you too quickly dismiss Microsoft’s Expression Web as simply being another gimmicky design tool amongst lots of other such tools on the market, I recommend that you first take it for a test drive by downloading the trial version that’s available. Tony Stevenson explains why.

The marketing catch phrase that’s associated with Expression Web, a professional web site design and creation tool from Microsoft, says that it allows you to “Build Your Web Site Your Way”.

Or, at the very least, spare a few minutes to watch the videos presented on its official site that highlight the four major feature sets of this technology. Those sets are centered around the creation of standards based web sites; the value of CSS based layout; rich data presentation; and the use of powerful server technology.

You might be surprised, like I was, at how these features of Expression Web possess the potential to save web designers and creators significant amounts of amount of development time. For example, the technology provides the capability to create CSS based, XHTML 1.0 transitional conforming web sites by default.

To quickly come to terms with the different sorts of functionality built into Expression Web, I recommend that you consult the FAQ on its site. By doing so, you can browse through answers to such questions as “Does Expression Web work on all browsers?”; “How does Expression Web compare to Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 and Visual Studio as a Web design/development tool?”; “How does Expression Web provide an enhanced user experience on the Web?”; “What resources come with Expression Web?”; and “How does Expression Web reduce development and design complexity?”

The flexibility and versatility of Expression Web can be extended even further through the use of a diverse range of add-ins and partner tools.

Just some examples of these include:

•the use of compatible templates;

•the introduction of standards compliant behaviors for enhancing users’ experiences on your company’s site, for example, through form field validation or personal greetings;

•improved usability by creating Flash button navigation bars;

•the incorporation of a Flash MP3 player;

•the inclusion of a Skype “Call Me “ button. Such a mechanism allows visitors to your Expression Web site to communicate with your company’s sales staff, technical support crew, consultants, and so on;

•the creation of custom Flash based slideshows to entertain/inform/educate visitors to your site; and

•the addition of a sales cart and associated e-commerce capabilities to a web site.