Microsoft Expression Studio VS Adobe CS3: Pathetic

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Zinn

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Microsoft is basically giving away all their development software to students, which is nice. I noticed they have a new program out called Expression Studio. Well, it’s actually a suite of programs that is trying to compete with Adobe’s CS3.

Their Dreamweaver rip off looks fine—except it doesn’t highlight syntax for non-Microsoft languages. Who’d want to use one of those anyway? Me, for one. Web developers aren’t retarded. They’re not gonna say, “oh, Microsoft’s HTML editor doesn’t support PHP. I guess I’ll just code in ASP.Net from now on.” That right there is an extremely bad business decision which will doubtlessly hamper any possible sales of their product. Imagine what would happen if Adobe decided one day that Dreamweaver would only support Coldfusion. Outrage.

Their Photoshop rip off looks like crap. The interface is janky and it just looks half assed. I’ll stick to Adobe Fireworks.

There are two other programs that I haven’t started yet because nobody, including Microsoft, can tell me what exactly they’re supposed to do.

Then there’s Silverlight, the Adobe Flash competitor. Who gives a fuck? We’ve had Flash for ages, why the hell would anyone use this? They give no compelling reasons as to why it could be any better than Flash.

All of this software is version 1.0 or less, so I’m being pretty harsh, but it just comes off as pathetic in my book. Adobe has had their Creative Suite software for years, and it’s solid. Microsoft decided to enter this arena, but they really half-assed their first offering in every way. It really feels like they took a development team maybe slightly larger than the Photoshop team, split them up 5 ways and told them to develop 5 different products in as short a time as possible. The end result is as successful as what you'd get if you tried to blow up a tank with a shotgun from a mile away.

I suspect that Microsoft is really trying to get their foot in the door with this release and they’ll try to actually release a worthwhile product by version 2.0, but they have a lot of work ahead of them to come anywhere near where Adobe is now, much less where Adobe will be by the time they get to where Adobe is now.
 
hey competition is always good

Adobe has been allowed to monopolize the 2d image editing with its photoshop for so long. And Dreamweaver is the dominant web editing tool too. Over the last couple year Adobe started to charge ridiculous prices for their software suites. Hopefully this will bring them down
 
In regards to syntax highlighting, I'm sure there is the option to add in custom highlighting; it's there in VS. I haven't played with any of the expression suite so I could be wrong.

Have you played with silverlight or are you just making assumptions without trying it out? Silverlight is extremely powerful due to the fact that you can create flash-like applications using the CLR; this means you can use VB, C#, even javascript. I'm not artistic at all (I'm a developer), but I can see the benefits of using these languages to create more powerful apps.

There are big companies using Silverlight, including MLB and Netflix. There must be a reason why these companies chose Silverlight over Flash. I'm not going to make any judgements, but companies like this generally use the best technology to get the job done.

As you said, these products are all 1.0. Do you think flash was as accepted when it first came out? Wait and see what people are doing with the new technologies.
 
Zinn said:
It really feels like they took a development team maybe slightly larger than the Photoshop team, split them up 5 ways and told them to develop 5 different products in as short a time as possible.
Click to expand...

This is quite likely. Word, Excel and Outlook all shipped as part of Office 2003, yet if you have ever tried to program extensions for these you might have noticed some (sometimes frustrating) differences. Microsoft has been doing business like this for years.
 
MS is infamous for lame 1.0 releases. But they often show great improvement by version 2 or 3. I think they release v1.0 to test exactly what it is customers want it to do. If there is little interest, then they can let it wither on the vine and not have wasted resources developing features for it.

I can almost guarantee you that Expression 2.0 will have a ton of improvements. Still doesn't mean I'll use it personally, but many "Windows Network Admins turned involuntary Web Developers" will find comfort in the familiar environment.

Just my observed experiences with many of their products.
 
bdowden said:
In regards to syntax highlighting, I'm sure there is the option to add in custom highlighting; it's there in VS.
Click to expand...
There is.
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Geez, it doesn't take much effort to make a thread nowadays. Don't bother learning the features of the programs and just making superficial observations really isn't thread-worthy.

I'm probably not alone on this, but I'm glad FrontPage is dead. Expression Web is a huge improvement. I have used it a little at home, but I use Dreamweaver at work. Expression Web has room for improvement, but it's a pretty nice editor for the scope it targets.

Silverlight missed the boat, coming out way to late to be a serious threat to Flash. I don't see anything really wrong with it, besides it only fully running on Windows right now. If it goes anywhere, it will probably have more success on the desktop than on the internet.

Expression Design is not a Photoshop clone. There's no point explaining why someone would need it since even the most basic search would give you information in seconds. You simply came to rant, not discuss. :rolleyes:
 
pxc said:
Don't bother learning the features of the programs and just making superficial observations really isn't thread-worthy. [...]You simply came to rant, not discuss. :rolleyes:
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Yeah. The "rip off" comments, arbitrary vulgarity, self-contradictory appraisals, and complete lack of insight are no substitute for sensible observation.

Meanwhile, I have a hard time calling Adobe software "solid". I'm not sure how it could load slower, the prices keep going up, and they don't support Win64. The releases are hardly bug-free, and they even get simple things -- like saving a file! -- wrong after all these years.

Adobe is ahead in this market for one simple reason: time. Photoshop is more than fifteen years old, now. The products in the suite that Adobe bought are about a decade old, too. You'd hope it was better than a product that was released six months ago, right?
 
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