Expression Web on MSDN

I don’t know exactly when, but Expression Web is listed on my MSDN as a development tool. I just finished converting my site to Dreamweaver because Microsoft hasn’t put Expression Web on MSDN. They claimed it was for designers, and it was not a development tool.

As I said, I don’t know when it appeared. My MSDN subscription has a listing of when new products are posted to the download area. I searched that going back for over a month and Expression Web is not listed. Interesting. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to do this quietly so as not to arouse any more bad press over the decision. (Well, bad press among MSDN techo-geeks.)

I will be posting the Dreamweaver version of my site tomorrow. Now I have to seriously rethink Dreamweaver vs. Expression Web as my tool of choice for maintaining my own web site. I was already planning to write about my Dreamweaver experiences for my June edition of Scott’s Column. It looks like that is going to be more involved than I originally planned.

Stay tuned!

Expression Web Gets the Boot for Dreamweaver

In a few days I will post the May articles on my main web site. With the May articles I am editing the web site using Dreamweaver MX 2004. That’s right, I gave Expression Web the boot. Feel free to read my diatribe on why Microsoft won’t provide copies of Expression Web to MSDN subscribers. I have yet to move any of the archived articles to the new format. I have been bouncing the format for a few months now. When it is set in stone I will start migrating all the old articles to the new format.

I will have a section of Scott’s Column dedicated to Dreamweaver. In the mean time I wanted to get something out. Now that I am not going to be using Expression Web Beta 1 (I didn’t upgrade to the final version because of the MSDN issue) I can upgrade to Office 2007. I could not install Office 2007 with Expression Web Beta 1. Now I have to decide if I really want to use Office 2007. I am tempted with this epiphany to just go home and install it. But I really wanted to use it with Vista in its full glory. I am still waiting on nVidia to release Vista drivers for the Go 7 Series video cards to try Vista again on my laptop.

Well, at least I have something to write about for my June article.

Hope to see to then.

Low Volume With Movies on Windows Vista

The friend that I watched a movie with on my flight to Las Vegas recently bought a Lenovo tablet PC running Windows Vista. He had the exact same problem with the volume playing a movie. Volume was low, and he found all the places to adjust volume, but it was still too low. Finally he tried installing WinDVD and it was able to play movies with volume-a-plenty.

Something to think about if you are having volume issues with movie on Vista.

The Pursuit of Happyness

I was really hoping to like this movie. I am even a fan of Will Smith. It took me three times to get all the way through it. Granted, I was doing other stuff while watching it the first two times. I did enjoy it some during the final and complete viewing.

Overall I was disappointed. The movie follows Chris Garner through approximately 6 months of his life. This is the 6 months of his life where his wife leaves him and he becomes homeless trying to raise his son while enrolled in an internship at Dean Witter. The internship does not pay anything and only 1 in 20 will be selected from the program to be an employee.

Of course he makes it, and they go through this part of his life well enough. But Chris is a millionaire, where tons of stock brokers are not. There is nothing here to show how Chris managed to get where he was… it literally ends when he gets his job.

I would have liked to seen a bit more. Certainly it would have been nice to see some of his successes. The movie ends up being depressing instead of a feel good movie. However, the extra footage on the disc where the cast and crew are interviewed… including Chris himself was more uplifting then anything else. Here we see a successful man that tells us stuff we really want to know. I don’t just want to know the struggles, I want to live vicariously though some of Chris’ successes as well.

Rent it if you want, but I firmly believe you can skip this movie and it won’t matter to you.

Sorry Chris & Will.

New DVD Player

I picked up a new DVD player to replace the broken player in my living room. It is progressive scan. I could not get a Upconvert model because my TV only has one set of HD inputs (1080i). Plus my TV does not have a HDMI connector. It is almost 8 years old… but still working great. My stereo receiver does not have Dolby Digital 5.1. That was built-in to the DVD player. Since that is no longer the case I lost 5.1 sound that was part of the Digital Ready aspect of my Home Theater in a Box. Hey, the stereo is 9 years old and working perfectly. Well, maybe it’s time to look for a new receiver.

Star Trek II – The Wrath of Kahn

I was at Barnes & Noble the other day. My wife was looking for a book for our son. She also wanted to check out there DVD selection. I came across Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and just had to buy it. For true Star Trek fans it is the best Star Trek movie of them all. Granted, there were a lot of movies, but this one takes the cake.

I would have to say it is a toss up which ones come next. Clearly for Next Generation fans the best movie is First Contact with the Borg. This movie paid respect to real fans of TNG in the same way that Kahn paid respect to fans of the original series.

Star Trek IV The Voyage Home was a light hearted movie that was geared toward a much larger audience rather than die hard Star Trek fans. Star Trek Insurrection was to Next Generation fans what The Voyage Home was to Classic Trek fans… a story with wider appeal than First Contact. These four are the only movies that really count. I would have a hard time justify buying any others.

I currently own Insurrection and The Wrath of Hahn. The Wrath of Kahn is the “director’s cut.” I am half way through watching it and so far there are 4 or 5 extended scenes, depending how you count. I will have more when I finish watching it.

Warner Demands Unprotected Music Not Be Sold

Well, it looks like Warner Music Group doesn’t want to sell its music without DRM type copy protection.

So much for the rest of the big music companies following EMI’s lead.

Expression Web Working… For Now

Last night I tried running the Free Trial of Expression Web. As you may recall Expression Web Beta 1 expired on me on April 1st. Just for fun I tried to open my web site last night and see if I could edit any of the pages. t worked. I cannot tell you why editing pages did not work on April 1st. Maybe it was an April Fools joke. Maybe The free trial tripped over the April 1st expiration date of the beta. Either way, Expression Web is working… until June 30th.

Of course, it would be a whole lot easier if Microsoft would just let the Expression line be part of MSDN. My current plan is to migrate my web site over to Dreamweaver MX 2004.

I’ll keep you posted.

Expression Web Beta 1 Expired on April Fools

How convenient. I was going to do my best to get the final editing done on my web site when Expression Web Beta 1 said it had expired. I tried downloading the “free trial.” I even went through the trouble of getting a temporary activation code. After installing the code it told me that my copy was good until June 30th. But it won’t let me edit anything.

Due to this I was not able to get my articles out on the 1st. I hope I will be able to get the articles posted tonight. I opened the web site in FrontPage 2003. It worked, but not with great results. The pages don’t look right. The formatting is all over. Clearly I am doing stuff in CSS that FrontPage doesn’t know about and doesn’t know how to render. I finished proofing my Car Corner column. I still have to proof read my Scott’s Column article and I need to lookup the NADA value on the cars that will appear in my Classic Car Watch article.

Hopefully I won’t run into trouble uploaded everything.

The big picture here is that I will be switching my web site over to Dreamweaver. I have an old copy of Dreamweaver (MX 2004). It may be old, but it does handle template pages. I will cover that in the May edition of Scott’s Column.

I guess Microsoft doesn’t want me to brag about Expression Web, since they won’t make it available on MSDN for us developers. Oops!

EMI Will Sell DRM Free Music On iTunes

Is Steve Jobs getting what he asked for. A while back Jobs put out a letter to all the music companies to sell their music in digital form free of DRM (Digital Rights Management). EMI is now going to do just that. For a 30 cent premium you will be able to buy EMI owned music tracks from iTunes without DRM.

I am a little surprised at this, but I am also glad. I think Steve Jobs was right, even though he clearly had ulterior motives in his open letter.

Let’s hope the other major labels follow suit soon.