Microsoft Expression Designer Preview

The first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft® Expression® Web Designer is released today. It is a professional design tool to help create modern standards-based Web sites.

There are three editions of Microsoft® Expression®.

Microsoft® Expression® Graphic Designer brings together the best of vector and pixel-based capabilities, letting you explore new creative and cutting edge possibilities.
• Microsoft® Expression® Interactive Designer helps you create streamlined, innovative and just plain beautiful applications. Users experience increased satisfaction, while you develop in a flexible, productive environment.
• Microsoft® 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 design, develop, and maintain exceptional standards-based Web sites. Web Designer CTP1 is available for preview.

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

Microsoft® Expression® Web Designer helps create CSS-based, XHTML 1.0 web sites, it work better across browsers, simplifying deployment and maintenance. Configure flexible schema settings to support all combinations of HTML/XHTML/Strict/Transitional/Frameset and CSS 1.0/2.0/2.1 in addition to browser-specific schemas. Validate your site with Compatibility reporting and use the Accessibility report

You can select schema, work with XHTML compliance, Real-time standards validation, Accessibility checking, lot of site and page templates, drag-and-drop style management, XML and XSLT support, RSS feeds,
supports ASP.Net, master pages, ASp.Net controls and ASP.Net Development server

I guess Expression Web Designer will replace Microsoft FrontPage currently supplied with Office suite for web development. I am not sure how Expression and Visual Studio work together, as Expression also supports ASP.net including master pages, Development server, etc.. Expression may help create simple pages and websites with ASP.Net, which does not have any debugging, web services and data layer functionality. Due to the huge size, I could not download the preview and try it.