3/4/08

It's Christmas in March (Sorta)

Here's a freebie that I thought I'd pass along to all my fellow under-funded graduate students: Microsoft is giving away free Web Development software to college students. Yes, you read that correctly, MS of all companies is giving away full-featured versions of Expression Studio, Visual Studio, Windows Server 2003, etc. They call it Dreamspark.


If you're thinking, "What does this have to do with me? I don't even like any of this stuff?!" All I can say is if you ever see yourself wanting to create your own webpage, or edit photos for the web, you really should at least pick up Expression Studio, MS's version of Adobe Dreamweaver. Read about Expression Studio on wikipedia. It's a $600 program. Really.


From what I've read MS is losing credibility with the up-and-coming web developer crowd because it's products are so expensive (and it's, well, Microsoft) compared to free Open Source software that basically does the same thing. So take advantage of this last-ditched effort to snag yourself a cool program or two. For free. Could MS be learning one of Barlow's dictums: "Familiarity has more value than scarcity"?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You could also try NVU which is free and open source (windows, mac, linux). I've tried this in earlier versions and it works decently. There is also Aptana which I have not tried.

Of course, you could just use Notepad or Notepad++ if you really want to hang out with the cool kids.

Basically, the web stuff that Microsoft has put out has had a lot of proprietary and non-standards compliant stuff. Of course, that was years ago, I haven't touched the stuff or even looked in its direction for years.

Willing to give it a try...

jr said...

I know what you mean but I've heard that the Web Standards Group consulted on Expressions Web, to make the rendering engine for the WYSIWYG more standards compliant. From what I've seen, they've done a decent job - this is definitely NOT Frontpage in a new skin! For those who want a full-featured WYSIWYG, free isn't a bad deal in my book. BTW, I use Notepad++ at home. Excellent little program.