A few days ago when the the Blue Flavor crew was out having lunch, we started discussing Expression Web and why there’s practically no interest in it at all. None of us have spent much time with EW’s suite of products, but there are good reasons why. The lack of interest can be boiled down to three main obstacles that anyone trying to carve out some space on Adobe Mountain will have to overcome.
1. Inertia
Learning new tools as complicated as Photoshop or Illustrator takes a whole lot of time that, technically speaking, we should not bill to clients. We’re paid to come up with design solutions and to demonstrate our creative problem-solving skills — our tools are merely vehicles that allow us to express those skills in a productive, profitable way.
As well, most seasoned designers are comfortable with their trusty tools and aren’t willing to invest the ten or more hours it takes to produce a design in a new application. If I were fighting this battle, I’d target the new products at younger designers who don’t have years of Adobe keyboard shortcuts under their belts.
2. There’s not a compelling reason why it’s better than the current tools
I’ve seen mile-long feature lists for new products, but I haven’t heard a single designer talk about being able to express his or her ideas more quickly or effectively as a result of using it. The features may be cool, but I want to see the results.
3. Designers are inherently brand whores
This is a big one. Designers create brands, so they’re naturally hyper-sensitive to subtleties of a particular brand’s attributes and reputation. Why else would there an odd obsession with Apple products within the community? I’m as guilty as the next designer, but I’ve accepted this as strictly a part of the web culture.
Take Microsoft, for instance. In my mind, Microsoft’s brand is forever tarnished, in much the same way that Pontiac’s is. Think about it — it doesn’t matter how many cool cars Pontiac produces, they’re still Pontiacs. If I were Microsoft, I’d make a spin-off division with a completely new brand marketed directly at designers. It worked for Xbox, and it might just work for the design community.
Introducing new tools into a saturated market is an uphill battle, but it’s not as if there’s no room at all. I’ve been impressed with a lot of tools built off Apple’s core image that have recently emerged, but I’ve yet to see a product that overcomes all the obstacles I’ve listed here.
It’s rare that a day goes by where I don’t hear someone cursing an Adobe product; and given Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, they could really use the competition.
I agree with all of your reason why the Expression Suite hasn’t really caught on in the web design community, but I’d add one more: it’s not on Mac.
The web design community is largely a Mac-shop, if you will, and most of us are simply not willing to switch platforms in order to use a new piece of software (especially when, as you say, that software doesn’t provide anything that feels especially compelling compared to the tools we’re already using).
I would add as well to being a brand whore, that the Expression suite is a Microsoft product, and coming out of the days of Frontpage (ugh, I said it :S), they are not known for putting forth powerful Web tools in an arena where Adobe has long been the dominate power.
I think because of how poor some of their past products are viewed, there really isn’t anyone looking to Microsoft for a new wave of Web development products except those in the corporate environments like myself.
Brand whoreness aside expression web is pretty similar to anything else - not bad. I think your idea of a separate brand is a great idea. It seems to be a move many of these web companies haven’t learned from Swiffer.
While this provides nothing more than a bit of humor to the topic, it IS relevant, I think. Check out Jimray’s tumblr post on this very topic. http://jimray.tumblr.com/post/32060254
Absolutely agree about designers having an innate affinity towards all Apple products and software that caters to this platform only. In several instances, I’ve been questioned whether I actually work for the company (Apple) or get some form of commission from them being as how I’m constantly find myself praising the company, their direction and most importantly their products.
The only aspect to the client that’s important is that deadlines are met and project is delivered and we use what we know and what we’re most comfortable to get things accomplished. Certainly there’s an array of new tools out there that can probably facilitate the process even more but as you mentioned, I personally don’t have the time to tinker with something too much. Stick with what you know.
@Jeff Croft Agreed. I meant to include a bit about that in my original post. Expression Web is at a huge disadvantage not being available on the Mac platform.
I think I’ve got more hope for another company besides Microsoft to come up with something better than our current set of tools. There’s some promising stuff out there, it’s just not quite there yet.
It’s really tough for a new startup company to break in, not because they have a bad brand, but because they don’t have a brand at all. It takes a lot of time to build up that trust with a community so entrenched with their tools. It’s a big reason why I haven’t spent much time with any of the new tools. I’m waiting to see if one emerges that’s considered better.
@Justin Lilly Hilarious.
Kyle: EW is Frontpage 2.0 …surely?! hehe
This is an interesting idea Tom, and it might just work for them. Trouble is, I think the ‘brand-identity’ problem runs deeper still…once Web Designers realised such a division was part of MS - it would still face trouble! Yes, I’m sort of suggesting the Gaming Community is more fickle! Haha!
Oh, Tom! Trying to bait me, are you? :-)
I have to agree with pretty much all your points, even the one about Adobe needing the competition. Competition eliminates complacency, which all large companies with dominant products are subject to developing.
Microsoft will not be able to come up with a competitive product to the Creative Suite because of culture, not competence. One can only be successful in building tools that meet the needs of creatives by relating to them. Microsoft understands development tools and enterprise software, not design. With a few exceptions (and I’m being charitable here), Microsoft’s products tend to treat design as an afterthought. Adobe’s products are designed for and by creative professionals.
That said, I think it is entirely possible that some small startup comes up with a radically new set of design tools that blows Adobe’s current products away. I hope they do because that will just push us harder.
That’s a fantastic strategy. But, don’t think that we don’t recognize the same opportunities. Photoshop is a great product, but was created in a different era. And, you can only adapt a product so much. Not that I’m announcing anything, of course!
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Adobe Systems, Inc.
If you look beyond the web standards designer/developer community and check out what is happening in the land of RIA, Microsoft is actually doing a pretty good job with its Expression product suite. Adobe Flex may have the overall lead in market share - given their several years head start, one would hope so - but the current MS tools aren’t half bad.
Good post, and I’d like to raise a few points.
I don’t really see the competition issue that most people do. Macromedia & Adobe were never really engaged in proper competition. Adobe did print & traditional media well. Every time the tried the web they failed. And vice versa. When they merged, they solved that problem and created a company that just does good creation tools. It’s quite clear from their work since they, that they’re anything but complacent. Yes, they have no single competitor, but they have lots of little ones.
Jeff: I don’t think it’s true to say web designers all use Macs. Perhaps that’s true in some circles/regions, but I’m based in Ireland and that’s anything but the case. Print designers are often mac based, but most web people are Windows based, purely so they can develop on their primary deployment platform.
Ultimately, I think Expression Web is a poor tool. It’s a bad copy of Dreamweaver and doesn’t innovate in any way. It’s aimed at .Net developers and is a tool to integrate with Visual Studio. I think we’ll see real innovation in a year or two. CSS is still quite immature and browser support is still a little bit dodgey. If you look at this like YUI an dthe Blueface CSS framework you can see how people are beginning to use CSS at a more advanced level.
The tool that will come and kick ass will be one that allows you to create standards-based XHTML & CSS with a WYSIWYG interface. We need InDesign for the web, and I think that will happen, but the people who create that will be people who are 17 or 18 today, and only know modern techniques. I look forward to the tools they create! :)
When Silverlight first came out, I went to a day-long training session, and was basically underwhelmed by what it had to offer over Flash (read: nothing yet). One giant drawback of MS’s new tools over Adobe’s, aside from those mentioned, is that the MS tools only work on one operating system. Therefore, Expression Suite would have to be an order of magnitude better than comparable products, because for many designers, it would require switching from OSX (back?) to Windows. That is a deal-breaker.
Some folks have been dancing around the issue of cross-platform compatibility. So the issue, in some ways, isn’t that we Mac-based designers don’t want to switch platforms. Maybe it’s that Windows-based designers know that they may need to interact/collaborate with the Mac folks.
Cross-platform software, like Adobe’s CS, plays well with others. Until MS improves the Expression Suite and makes a Mac version of it, they’ll have a hard time cutting into CS.
Interesting article. It does seem like M$ is trying to target SMBs with the expression suite. It might be an overzealous strategy being that the have a firm hold in the corporate world.
I use products like Visual Studio 2008 and Sharepoint Designer in my daily workflow and they are great for what they aimed at. My favorite feature is having the ASP test server start up only I need it and right from the IDE. Much easier than administrating a WAMP or LAMP based development server.
However at the same time corporate people seem to think a large percentage of the time that if you’re not spending money on something then its garbage. I’m sure that Kyle knows what I’m talking about.
Funny because you can get a quality IDE from eclipse that offers the same functionality as VS2008 and Eclipse costs nothing. The ironic thing though is that the eclipse foundation is owned by M$!!!
Erik,
I am on a Mac and use Parallels to run Microsoft development products, as could you. In fact, MS has a promotion coming up that seems like a sweet deal. Expression Studio, Visual Studio, Office Standard, Office Visio Professional, Windows XP, Windows Vista Business Edition, Virtual PC and Parallels Desktop for Mac for less than $1,000. If you work with .NET and IIS, but want to stick with OS X, this is a killer solution.
I think that cross-compatibility is what every designer should focus on.