Microsoft Expression Web, code-named Quartz, is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and general web design program by Microsoft, replacing Microsoft FrontPage. It is part of the Expression Studio suite. Expression Web is focused on the needs of professional Web designers seeking to build high-quality, standards-based Web sites for companies[attribution needed]. It provides support for integrating XML, CSS 2.1, ASP.NET 2.0, XHTML, XSLT, and JavaScript into sites. It requires the .NET Framework 2.0 to operate. Its sibling is Microsoft SharePoint Designer. Expression Web uses its standards-based rendering engine, different from the browser-based FrontPage, which uses Internet Explorer's Trident engine. [1] Microsoft claims that Expression Web's rendering engine currently provides the most accurate standards-compliant rendering on the market, [2] especially CSS rendering. On May 14, 2006, Microsoft released the first public preview version of Expression Web on their website. On Sept 5, 2006, Microsoft released Beta 1. The major changes from CTP 1 are that nearly all of the old FrontPage bots and functions have been removed.
There are currently several variations of expressions that may be used and may require different versions of .NET or other requirements.