Author: Jim Cheshire
Publisher: QUE, 2007
ISBN: 978-0789736055
Aimed at: Intermediate to advanced web creators
Rating: 4
Pros: Comprehensive
Cons: Covers a lot of very obvious ground
Reviewed by: David Conrad

I’ve looked at a number of books on Microsoft’s Expression Web, the replacement for FrontPage, and they have all been so simple-minded in their approach that they were simply not worth reviewing. This is the first that makes it over that hurdle but it still has some problems. It’s aimed at intermediate to advanced web designers and developers and covers everything from simple HTML editing through Javascript. The main problem is that while the book is comprehensive it gives few insights in to how things should be done. Most of the information presented is also fairly obvious and could be discovered simply by exploring the user interface a little and perhaps even reading the admittedly inadequate documentation. Where it does work is in the later and more advanced chapters on topics such as CSS, DHTML, ASP .NET and so on but majority of these ideas aren’t specific to Expression Web. There are far too many screen dumps that illustrate the obvious, even in the advanced sections. The conclusion has to be that this isn’t an essential book but it’s the best there is at the moment.

<Reviewed in VSJ>