14 DAY TRIAL // At just three months after the release of the first upgrade for Expression Web 4, Microsoft has now made available for download Service Pack 2 (SP2). Expression Web 4 SP1 introduced a number of enhancements including support for HTML5 and CSS3, following in the footsteps of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), also launched earlier this year.
Similarly, Expression Web 4 SP2 RTM, which is available free of charge from the Microsoft Download Center, introduces a collection of improvements.
According to Microsoft, Expression Web 4 customers that make the jump to SP2 will notice that support for jQuery has improved considerably, but will also be able to take advantage of additional examples of evolution after the upgrade, including image thumbnails in the Folder List panel, a new Snippets panel, etc.
It’s important to note that the software giant has dealt with a range of issues affecting Expression Web 4 SP1 and earlier.
Following the integration of SP2 RTM, Expression Web 4 will grow in terms of reliability and performance, and is bound to deliver a superior user experience since a variety of glitches and bugs have now been fixed.
Expression Web 4 SP2 RTM is Build 4.0.1303.0, with Microsoft setting up KB 2571841, designed to detail the changes introduced with the upgrade:
“-jQuery support - IntelliSense has been added for jQuery. In addition to the jQuery functions themselves, this provide IntelliSense for ids and classes in your document when creating jQuery selectors.
- New Snippets Panel and improved Snippets behavior - Snippets now appear in their own panel. This panel provides all the previous functionality of the snippets feature, including keyboard accessibility from Code View with CTRL+ENTER.
- Image Thumbnails in the Folder List Panel - The Folder List now provides an image thumbnail preview in Windows 7 and Vista. This includes information such as file size, width, and height of the image for reference.
- Interactive Snapshot Panel - The Snapshot panel now provides an Interactive mode for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. This mode allows you to preview dynamic content and code in a browser inside Expression Web. All JavaScript and other interactive content will behave just as if you used the Preview in Browser command.
- Universal comment/uncomment - Code view now provides context-sensitive comment and uncomment functionality. The appropriate type of comment will be inserted, depending on the type of code block you currently have selected in your document.
- Workspaces - Customers can now define and save multiple layouts of their application and panels. Several starter workspace layouts are provided.
- Custom Toolbars - The popular Custom Toolbars Add-in has been directly built into the application, enabling you to create and name multiple custom toolbars and to add items of your choosing to each of them.
- Look and feel improvements to the Code View - Code now uses the popular Consolas font by default. Color and syntax highlighting in Code view have also been improved.”
Expression Web 4 Service Pack 2 (SP2) RTM Build 4.0.1303.0 is available for download here.