Microsoft Expression Web 2 experiences while programming VS studio 2005/2008

Question

Have been programming with VS studio 2005/2008 making ASP.NET applications for a while.
I am interested in experiences with Microsoft Expression Web 2 (strengths and weaknesses)

Answer 1

I have some designer friends who are big fans of the Expression suite. As a code monkey, it isn't part of my own regular tool kit.

However; note that most web design tools (presumably Expression Web included) tend to be quite hard to pair with regular ASP.NET, simply because you don't have full control of the HTML. If you are going to look at things like Expression Web for designer input, might I suggest looking at ASP.NET MVC, as this gives you much more direct control over the final HTML - pretty much allowing you to drop the designer's html into your "view", and just start adding the data elements.

It looks like the tool tries to play nicely with (regular) ASP.NET, but how well it behaves once you start adding real ASP.NET code may be different.

Answer 2

I am very disappointed with Expression Web 3.

I tried to use it to fast prototyping HTML+CSS, hoping that it will be much better than VS for the task, but the experience was very similar (poor).

It is a shame that you can not preview any page while editing the CSS.