Marketing Logic

In order to compete with similar products from Google and Yahoo, Microsoft has created Office Live. It is in Beta and the comments about the back-end management of the site have been very complimentary so far. Users have access to all the features of Office Essentials and to Office Collaboration, which are all free throughout the Beta. (Oh, they offer free analytics as well . . . )

Eric Meyer talked about another Microsoft project as well and was very impressed in his review. Microsoft Expression. Apparently this is “FrontPage done right” as Eric calls it. It creates “sophisticated CSS –based layouts”. The demo is pretty impressive.

Not long after seeing Eric’s post I wandered upon a similar-themed post at The Web2.0 Place, where Edmon Begoli reviews Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express Edition 2005. There is no auto-generated HTML, even when operating in WSYWIG mode. It also supports CSS 2.1, XHTML and even assists for CSS.

These products are strange, because of the mixed messages, at this point. The upcoming of release of IE7 has CSS developers on the verge of frustration with Microsoft because of the lack of CSS adherence. Microsoft’s answer is that the CSS bugs will not be addressed in the first release and is not talking about the CSS problems that IE7 has in the initial release.

This has to make you wonder about the angle that Microsoft is taking at the industry. If they can get into the design tools for basic site building, and get the CSS crowd on their side (not until IE gets worked out), then it certainly provides a foothold, but to where?