Moreover Adobe won.. really the core issue with Expression product line was it was built to take on Adobe to try and win over the hearts & minds of designers to the Microsoft tribe. Its why you'll search anything related to Silverlight/WPF/Expression between 2007-2009 usually has an Adobe or Microsoft Evangelist (myself included) punching it out over who's got the biggest digital ***** ...
Adobe won... and when it came down to justifying Expression Web's future it had little to do with actual adoption (which didnt size very well) and also the funding stream for the product got caught up in the MSDN ledger codes.. In that MSDN argued that BEFORE Expression products came online the subscribers existed therefore why should they splice off a portion of the funding to score in the Expression team's coffers? even though the download numbers were in millions... to them anyone who downloaded were just simply kicking the tyres not doing anything with it... so now the Expression team were left to not only ask for more funding (keep the lights on per say) as a product line but they also had weak if not any income stream to pull from (hence you saw those really weird deals with Expression Studio and Windows) to try and stimulate outside MSDN purchases. Then Bizspark also came along and annihilated any chance of a non-MSDN subscriber from buying the product given if you were a start-up Microsoft would just hand you the MSDN subscription for free if all you did was provide them with an ABN or LLC (US). Inside Microsoft there are no free products.. if you have $0 income you better be standing before an executive of some sort every 3months explaining how your product made another product's adoption rates spike a little. If you can't show positive revenue or influence (with evidence depending on how dumb the executive you brief - with us we found Steve B not as bright as people paint) then you better start getting your LinkedIn profile up to date or making better friendships with another division. (It could be different now with the re-org but i've not heard much in the way of difference... if anything its a little more crazy given the companies in this weird SteveB is out caretaker mode). --- Regards, Scott Barnes http://www.riagenic.com On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 7:00 PM, Sam Lai <samuel....@gmail.com> wrote: > I think they saw/foresaw that market disappear thanks to web apps and > services like Wordpress, Blogger and other 'CMS as a service' sites. > > To be honest, it has probably made the web a nicer looking and more > accessible place, lowering the barrier to entry substantially. For the rest > who prefer to code, they'd know about VS Express, VS, Webstorm, Eclipse, > Netbeans, Sublime Text, etc. > ------------------------------ > From: Greg Keogh <g...@mira.net> > Sent: 15/09/2013 6:04 PM > To: ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> > Subject: Re: Expression Web > > It lost out due to Sharepoint Designer or whatever that has now mutated >> into and there was no point competing with Sharepoint Designer + VS Express >> as it just created way to much internal bad blood. >> > > But no home user, or low-tech user is going to ever see SharePoint > Designer or VS Express (I don't use either). The old FrontPage filled an > important product hole I thought and I really liked it back in 97-98 when > it arrived (at least it killed HotDog and similar crap). Then it quietly > disappeared and turned up mutated as Expression Web. Now it's gone again. > Has Microsoft simply abandoned the product line of "web design apps for > home users"? > > Greg K >
