Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
See below for THE FIX to this problem. Once the fix was discovered, the program works. ----------Original Review with Problem--------- I haven't gotten to use this suite of software yet. The features and capabilities get me all excited, but Expressions Web has lost the ability to display and edit html code. It has the design view and split design and code view, and code view just like Front Page. I did manage to "import" my Front Page html files, many of which had been written by stripping out Front Page specific code. And at first, Expression Web worked those files just fine. I edited and uploaded a file to test the program and everything worked. A week later I came back to do some real work, updating links, and Expression Web 4 opened the file in design view, then crashed when I went to code view to work the links. It did that on several of my imported files so I tried it on a new file it made for itself, and it crashed there too. So I tried it on an empty file it made, and it crashed instead of going to code view. I spent a day on the Microsoft site digging into the Forums, and the best guess among users is that EW4 is "unstable" when the dotNET FRAMEWORK is "corrupted." So I dug into my computer and found MS had sent 4 updates on June 28, 2011 for the dotNET Framework 4. That is about when the performance changed from great to crash. Yes, I did all the usual things, "repairing" EW4 from the installation CD (I have Expression Studio 4 Ultimate), trying to "reinstall" from the CD, and then reinstalling dotNET after I went Binging around the Microsoft site to find the "original" files. I found the dotNET files on the Microsoft site, and reinstalled the dotNET 4. It's still not working (after lots of rebooting too). EW4 will not display html code view for me now. Maybe Microsoft will send a fix before I can fix it. I do have other things to do. I'll have to work in notepad for a while, though. I did love FRONTPAGE, I do love the potential of EW4, but potential doesn't get the work done. Google "Forum FAQ and Guidelines Microsoft Expression Web 4" to find the user discussions, seldom visited by Microsoft employees and get the latest on this issue. I don't recall the search term that finally led to the download page for the dotNET Framework install files, but I have to find it again and do it all again. Use BING on the Microsoft site, and with some persistence it should turn up. I'd love to hear from anyone else having this "won't display code view" issue, especially if you've solved it. ---------------End Original Review with Problem----------- FOUND THE FIX The first comment written below this review got me started on this problem again. I went to justanswer.com and tried my luck with computer consultants. One of them found my problem on the first try. Here's the clue. Microsoft security patches and Windows patches and updates sometimes change the permissions or other operating system settings without your knowing it. At this point, I don't know if it was a .NET Framework patch that messed this up, or if it was an Expression Studio patch, or a Windows patch, but I suspect it was one of their patches that disabled my install of Expression Web part of the Expression Studio 4 package. I can't prove it, though. HERE'S THE FIX that worked. Dig the program out of the START menu, rightclick, and click "Run as Administrator." Boom, the program works. I have a Win7 Professional 64 bit operating system, and it's very much like Linux. The server psychology is all over it, with users and permissions and ownership of files and programs. I knew that, but I didn't know that "Run as Administrator" is a higher level of "Permission" than Log On As Administrator. So I got this program to work. The only nag was that every time I launched the program, I got the dialog that asks if I want to let the program make changes to the computer. That's apparently an artifact of running as administrator. To change permissions (and you might need a tutorial in permissions before you do this) rightclick the program's entry in the START MENU, and click PROPERTIES, then click on the COMPATIBILITY tab. At the bottom, there's a button that says "Change settings for all users." The next dialog has a checkbox at the bottom, "Run this program as an administrator," so you can set it to always run at the higher level of permission (but you only see that if you are logged on with the correct permissions; this is to protect company computers from desk workers). Under the SECURITY tab, you can click the Edit button and change permissions in various patterns. By changing permission for EVERYONE, and taking away the checks for "run this program as administrator" I was able to get the nag dialog about making changes to the computer to go away. Don't do this on a company computer! So for the moment, my problems with this program are solved. I tried a couple others in the Expression Studio 4, and they seem functional.