Expression Web Designer gives you all the tools you'll need to produce high-quality, standards-based Web sites the way you want them. Take advantage of the best of dynamic Web site design, enabling you to easily develop, design and maintain exceptional standards-based webpages.



Expression Web Designer helps you create and work with:

· Standards-based Web sites

· Sophisticated CSS-based layouts

· Extensive CSS formatting and management

· Rich data presentation

· Powerful ASP.NET 2.0-based technology



NOTE: A product key is required for Expression Web 2. You can obtain a product key by visiting the Expression Web 2 product key page.



Here are some key features of "Microsoft Expression Web Designer":



· XHTML compliance

· Design sites according to today's exacting standards with minimum effort by taking advantage of Web Designer's deep support for XHTML.



· Full schema support

· Choose whatever schema you want to adopt, Web Designer builds appropriate code, and the compatibility checker highlights non-conformant custom code.



· Real-time standards validation

· Receive instant feedback of standards violations so instant corrections can be made during the design process, whether in design or code view. Prevents time-consuming corrections at a later stage in the design.



· Accessibility checking

· Use the built-in accessibility checker to make sure that Web sites can fully conform to accessibility standards for reading by screen readers, with support for WCAG and Section 508 standards.



· Professional design surface

· Design high-quality Web sites and applications with a state-of-the-art, professional toolset and design surface that combines power with ease of use, allowing direct manipulation of margins and padding throughout the document.



· High-quality CSS rendering engine

· Produce a faithful representation of the look of the final browser-rendered page with a powerful CSS rendering engine which allows design decisions to be made with confidence



· Standard or Quirks rendering

· Render pages in Standard or Quirks mode depending on the doctype setting of the page for maximum browser compatibility.



· Site and page templates

· Improve initial design productivity by starting with professionally designed templates that are fully XHTML and CSS compliant



· Tag property grid

· Retrieve and set all valid properties for a selected tag. Access all the power of the HTML language through one palette.



· Intelligent CSS style creation

· Focus on the design process and let Expression Web Designer take care of CSS style creation, avoiding repetitive style creation throughout your site.



· Drag-and-drop style management

· Try out designs with local in-page CSS styles and then easily migrate styles to a central repository using drag and drop.



· Intelligent style renaming

· Rename styles instantly without find and replace with locally stored site metadata recording all style usage.



· CSS reporting

· View detailed reports on CSS style usage across sites in the Results pane to effectively manage the deployment of consistently styled pages.



· CSS design time preferences

· Set preferences for exactly how CSS code is generated throughout an application to have complete control over Expression Web Designer code generation.



· Customized views of XML data

· Design customized views of industry-standard XML data using powerful drag-and-drop tools to quickly achieve visualizations that conform to the CSS site design.



· XSL Transform support (XSLT)

· Present data using XSLT, with support for editing views on live XML data to give designers full flexibility to represent XML data the way they choose.



· Powerful data manipulation

· Fine-tune the raw data presented on the page with tools to sort, filter, and apply condition formatting.



· RSS Feeds

· Retrieve and present XML data from live RSS feeds on your site, styled to match the look and feel of the site.



· Create and edit ASP.NET pages

· Create, edit, and deploy Web pages with deep support for the newly released ASP.NET 2.0 standard. Capture the power of ASP.NET with the ease of use of drag-and-drop controls.



· Master Pages

· Maintain the correct look of your site with the use of server-rendered ASP.NET Master Pages to speed up the design process and allow easy site-wide changes. Nested Master Pages allow complex designs to be maintained.



· ASP.NET controls

· Access ASP.NET controls and their associated properties with the same power as Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 but rendered within the design surface of Web Designer.



· ASP.NET Development Server

· Preview ASP.NET pages locally, without the need for a full Web server, with the ASP.NET Development Server, allowing design decisions to be made with full reference to the page's data.



· No code data binding

· Use a drag-and-drop interface that accesses the power of ASP.NET with no coding requirement to visually bind data sources to controls on the design surface.



Requirements:



· PC with 1 GHz or faster processor

· 512 MB of RAM or more

· 150 MB of available hard-disk space

· NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1

· Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 graphics with Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) Driver, 128 MB of graphics RAM or more, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, 32-bits per pixel

· DVD compatible drive

· 1024 x 768 or higher-resolution monitor with 24-bit color

· Actual requirements and product functionality may vary based on your system configuration and operating system.