Jim Cheshire who is working in Microsoft Customer Support wrote a book on the Visual Web Developer 2008 and all the new features that VWD 2008 has for Web designers.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Expression-Developers-Guide-ASP-NET/dp/0789736659/ref=pd_bbs_sr_11/002-2785247-3265648?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192991861&sr=8-11

Thanks for the info Mikhail. I have seen you answering most queries related to VS, and I can see you are MSFT, however do you specialize in VS or you manage VS or what? Just asking out of curiosity?  

Manage VS would be running 2000 people division , that's Soma's job. I am development manager of the Visual Web Developer / VS Web Tools, i.e. my job is to run development team that brings you VWD Express as well as Web development tools in Visual Studio. ScottGu is my boss' boss. I do write code still

Why is it call The Microsoft Expression Web Developer's Guide... when it is in fact about VWD?

I was thinking of getting EW when I realized I likley really needed VWD (maybe both are needed or complementary?)

Curious minds want to know.

Brett

Web form development is quite different from Windows forms. Although it is possible to position elements absolutely and drag them around, this is generally not the best practice since user can resize browser window, arbitrarily increase or decrease text size, change formatting by telling browser to drop fonts and size definitions, etc. Try Web search for "CSS Positioning".

 http://www.webreference.com/html/tutorial18/

http://www.brainjar.com/css/positioning/

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/tutorials/css/introduction

http://www.csszengarden.com/

BrettH:

Why is it call The Microsoft Expression Web Developer's Guide... when it is in fact about VWD?

I was thinking of getting EW when I realized I likley really needed VWD (maybe both are needed or complementary?)

Curious minds want to know.

Brett

Mikhail,

Like Brett, I have wondered about going to Expressions Web, but I really don't know the reason why one would choose VWD over EW, or visa versa.  I just recently found out that the Express Edition was a stripped down version of VWD in VS.  I'm not programming for a living any more.  I'm disabled, and living on my disability income, so making a huge purchase like VS is a challenge for me.  But I love to learn the new technoligies, and keep my mind active doing things for myself, or for friends. The book you referenced at the beginning of this thread talked about both EW and VWD.  I wasn't sure which it addressed.  Rarely do books that try to cover more than one program do a good job with either. :) 

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on VWD (EE or VS), EW, and their strenghts, or what one is better at than the other.  In other words, some help in deciding which way to go.

Also, I am late to the web world. I'm an old VB6 Windows Application Programmer.  I know ADO in that world like the back of my hand.  But I am really stumped in how to retrieve and use Data in ASP for VWD.  I love the controls that are available, but since the only Help files avaiable are for VWD2005, they often refer you to Menus or Menu Items that don't exist in 2008. And while I like the Membership controls in VWD, I hate that it requies such a super-strong password, including a non-alphanumeric character.  And I don't know how to change that.  I read somewhere to edit the web.config file.  I opened mine and couldn't find an entry that address this.

There's so much to learn, and I want to learn it, but seem pretty much stymied in finding help.I know this post is lengthy, but if you could address all these issus, I would love it. :)

Any and All input is apprecited grealy!!!

 Thanks,

Bob

Book title is indeed somewhat misleading. I believe originally book was about using Expression Web with VWD 2005. However, since VWD 2008 was coming out at about same time and it provided same designer as Expression Web, book content was changed to VWD 2008. However, it looks like publisher decided not to change the book title.

Couple of links regarding Expression vs. VWD:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2006/12/20/expression-vs-visual-studio-and-visual-web-developer.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2007/02/26/what-is-not-in-the-vs-orcas-web-designer-compared-to-expression-web.aspx

Expression Web is primarily for designers, it has more extensive page layout tools. VWD is more for coders, it provides debugging, extensive coding tools, etc. Since you are primarily programmer, VWD may be a better choice. I am not sure you need full Visual Studio, at least not in the beginning.