by-expression blog

Hurricane Ike

Many of you know I live in the Houston metro area. As of today we ore still without power and internet. We do have generator and sometimes I can get a cellular data connection. Many towers were damaged so that isn't quite as easy to get or normal since voice is getting priority over data on the cellular connections.

My husband has been walking around our neighborhood with a camera so I have used one of the default galleries from Project Seven to quickly parts them up at http://cheryldwise.com/albums/ike1/index.asp  if you are interested. Despite the Number of 40 foot plus trees down remarkably few houses were hit but it has taken a toll on own power lines.

We have been been lucky with the weather since Ike has passed with lows around 60 and highs around 80, may to continue until the power is back on throughout the area.

BTW, if you are wondering how I posted this and the galleries sans power my local Starbucks has power and they have opened their internet connection for free use.

Expression Web Survey

Over on the Microsoft Expression Community forum they have posted a  link to the survey  asking users of Expression Web to prioritize what they would like to see in the next version of Expression Web.

Left off the Survey:

They left off their survey choices several things that I would like to see which are:

• The ability to customize the toolbox - there are html elements I would like to add there and it would make it much easier for people to create add-ins if it supported custom controls.
• The ability to integrate with source control for those who are working in more than one program. Most of the people who I've talked to would like to see integration with Visual Studio Team Services.
• Improve the FTP client, make it faster, compatible with Windows Server 2008, add the ability to set file permissions if you are connected to a Linux server using chmod and htaccess.
• The other thing I would like to see is for Expression Web to watch for updates to files outside of Expression Web. If I've opened a page in some other program whether it is Visual Web Developer Express, TopStyle (I still occasionally use it primarily to reorder my stylesheet and format it according to the more flexible options in TopStyle), a graphics program or whatever Expression doesn't recognize the changes or prompt me to reload. That has caused the work done in an external editor to be overwritten on occasion which is rather annoying.

A couple of bugs I'd like to see fixed are:

• The inability to FTP to a Windows 2008 server because the FTP client in Expression Web doesn't allow the pipe "|" character in user names, sigh.
• The bug that prevents many people (me included) from seeing thumbnails of images they want to insert into their web pages using the browse button on the Insert Picture dialog box. It is rather annoying to have to open an Windows Explorer window to see them, get the file name then insert in Expression Web. Bad workflow there.

What would you like to see that was left off the Microsoft feature list?

The MS Public Forum

Speaking of bugs and improvement needed how about fixing some of the major issues with the Microsoft Expression Web Forum?

I would like to reliably be able to post replies when I click the submit button. 80% or more of the time using the submit button does not submit my posts. Since the latest update (that changed the url to http://social.expression.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ which with the word "social" in the url is blocked by the corporate firewall of two of my students) I have been able to submit only one post by clicking the submit button. What I have to do is (using IE 7 on Vista Ultimate):

1. Visit the forum.
2. Login - which can take 30 sec to 2 min. depending on how well the Live sign in servers are working.
3. Use the dropdown arrow to expand a topic to view its thread.
4. If I wish to quote part of the question or a post in the thread go to html view to add <div class="quote"> or <blockquote> to use the proper html mark-up since quoting is not available unless you go to thread view, (more clicks and time wasting)
5. Type in my reply then hit the submit button. Wait a few seconds to see if it will post or to see if there is a slight quiver to my browser window which tells me that the submit has failed.
6. In the case of the submit button not working (remember that is at least 80% of the time) highlight my post and copy it using a keyboard shortcut so I don't get the alert box asking me to allow IE access to my clipboard. Then use the refresh button on my browser.
7. Let's see some of your list so we can support each other in what we want to see in the next version (or maybe a service pack since MS isn't really clear why they are asking.)
8. In most cases this will submit my post but it will also collapse open thread and return me to the top of the page, sigh.
9. In a minority of cases, say less than 5% when I refresh I get logged out. I will admit that since the update yesterday I have not been logged out when refreshing to submit a post but I have to log in every time through Live since my credentials are not remembered.

I really hate to say it but I think the FrontPage 98 Discussion Board was more user friendly.

Oh, it would also help if you could search just one section of the forum such as just the Expression Web section.