Expression Web 4 Service Pack 1

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Typically, we come out with a service pack release to fix bugs, address performance problems, and add a bit of polish to a product.

In the case of Expression Web 4 SP1—we really couldn’t wait. We saw all the cool stuff that’s happening around HTML5—we  knew the release of IE9 was coming—and we said to ourselves, “We need to get some Expression Web HTML5 goodness out, ASAP!”

And, here it is, built into Expression Web 4 SP1.

We’ve added IntelliSense for the complete HTML5 specification, IntelliSense for the (evolving) CSS3 draft spec, support for all new CSS properties in the CSS Properties palette, and support for selected CSS properties in the Style dialogs (like the Border Radius dialog below).

There is a lot of stuff in here. And now, you have no excuses for not jumping on the HTML5 bandwagon.
We’ve also got support for IE9, so that you can Snapshot your page and preview it directly within Expression Web.


 
If you haven’t checked out SuperPreview in a while, you’ll want to. There are quite a few improvements including support for Chrome (via our online service) as well as IE9 rendering. One request we heard a lot was the need to compare pages that are behind a login screen. SuperPreview SP1 includes a new feature called “Page Interaction Mode” that lets you browse interactively to your page of interest, and then submits that page to your set of chosen browsers.


 
This allows you to use SuperPreview on password-protected pages on your Intranet, or on authenticated Internet sites.
We’ve updated our PHP support with hundreds of functions from PHP5, added a number of new niceties like “Open as PHP,” “Open folder in Windows Explorer,” “Copy File Path,” and others. We’ve also added IntelliSense for extended characters—so, as soon as you type a “&”—you’ll get a list of the HTML character entities that filters as you continue to type.


 
We automatically look for Chrome, Safari and Opera and conveniently add them to the list of browsers you can use to preview.


 
Expression Web 4 SP1 is available now via the Microsoft Download Center at https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f6e1bbd9-2b1b-40e8-948b-1276e3b5daa3. Enjoy!

Steven Guttman