Microsoft Finally Gets Web Standards
By Dr Chris P. Jobling
MS Frontpage was long known (and often derided) for its tendency to walk all over web standards. It looks like this is about to change. [Best Tech Videos On The Net](http://www.bestechvideos.com/) (which incidentally is a great place for finding new Tech Videos) has just published a set of videos and demos from [Microsoft MIX07](http://visitmix.com/). One of these that I’ve just watched concerns how the new version of [Microsoft Visual Studio (ORCAS)](http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/25/microsoft-mix07-using-visual-studio-codename-orcas-to-design-and-develop-rich-ajax-enabled-web-sites/) can be used to create great-looking AJAX web sites (tied to .NET of course!). I found the video particularly compelling because of the way MS now embrace standards-driven design and proper separation of *Style* from *Content*. For example, the HTML shown in the demo was properly marked-up XHTML 1.0 Transitional and the styles where kept out of the markup. But even better, there’s a visual designer for CSS that shows the padding, margins and styles all linked to views of the tags, style properties, and live display. This stuff apparently is in [Microsoft Expression](http://www.microsoft.com/expression/) and if so, it will make that product a really compelling replacement for Frontpage. It’ll be even more so if Microsoft has recognized that not all web sites are based on ASP.NET! But I guess I’ll have to evaluate the product to see if that is true!
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