Question

I want a visual tool to build the html for my ASP.NET MVC views, and Expression Web 3 is on sale. Alternative would be Dreamweaver. But I have not used either tool so I don’t know if they ‘play well’ with MVC. I basically want a tool to design a clean, professional looking web front end without having to type up all the HTML by hand in Visual Studio and keep running the app to see what it looks like.

Answer 1

We ended up not having to design the web application after all, but I did end up purchasing Expression Web 3. It will help you generate the overall look and feel of your web page, and then you can take that and paste it into Visual Studio and chop it up into segments so it can be generated as a view in MVC.

That being said, you could also do the UI design with Dreamweaver instead of Expression Web. They’re both just tools, and you’ll only use them to do the UI design and artwork that you’ll end up plugging into VS anyway.

You’ll spend most of your time in VS. You’ll still have to know your HTML and CSS very well because you’ll be making your HTML and CSS tweaks in VS. When a change happens to the UI, you’ll probably go back to Expression Web or Dreamweaver, but then you’ll have to trace down the changes you made to the HTML or CSS and then make those same exact changes to the View you have programmed in VS.

Don’t fret, though. I’m sure there are thousands of developers out there in the same predicament who are using MVC and the feedback I’m getting is that they love it. So although there is not a dedicated UI designer for MVC doesn’t mean that you’ve picked a poor web development technology. I certainly wouldn’t choose standard ASP.NET instead, or even Ruby on Rails because of a lack of a dedicated UI designer. Stick with MVC if you’re in the Microsoft camp, its good stuff. And if you’re not, then do Ruby on Rails.

Good luck, Klaus