MIX07 Update: Feedback on Expression Web

I just attended a seminar on Expression Web 1.0 and while it seems to be definitely a 1.0 product (e.g. nothing too flashy, not that mature quite yet) it has some interesting features.

What makes it cool:

• Really strong CSS editing - ability to diagnose inheritance issues, see what styles are applied, etc.
• Refactoring support - easily rename styles, move styles from to page, promote styles from page level to an external style sheet, etc.
• Word like style support. Think of the Word 2003 Format Styles dialog box for HTML. This would make it really easy to apply pre-defined styles especially for non-technical users.

This product seems to be really an HTML editor with very little integration. There was some discussion that this developer/designer integration is coming in the 2.0 product, but I wonder why they couldn't include the same CSS/HTML editing tools in VS 2005 or the next version of it? In my experience, one of the biggest challenges is interface and back-end HTML integration, and having everything in one tool would certainly help on this front. I've had too many experiences where the interface developer creates a beautifully formatted static HTML template and then either one of two things happen: 1) the CSS is so complicated that the ASP.NET team cannot inject their code into it easily or 2) the ASP.NET team ends up creating subtle HTML/CSS bugs when the dynamic code is inserted. I'm not sure how ExpressionWeb really helps in this regard, but I've only so far seen the demo.