More info on FPSE bot removal

There has been quite a bit of discussion about our last blog post, so I wanted to take a few minutes to respond to some of the persistent themes found in people’s comments. Specifically, I wanted to address the following two concerns:

1. That Includes should not have been removed along with the rest of the bot functionality.
2. That Page Transitions should have been removed.

First, let’s talk about Includes. When we first planned to remove bots, we knew that customers would find some pieces of functionality missing that they would want put back into the product (though not necessarily in the same form). Our plan has been that some of these components (for example Includes and the Photo Gallery) would be seen again in future releases of the product, though after redesigns that gave them additional functionality and/or made them more designer-friendly (in other words, fixing the issues that caused us to remove the features in the first place.

We agree, though, that this may not be enough in the case of Includes, since:

1. They are already standards-compliant
2. They do not require FPSE to be used correctly
3. They are extremely useful for keeping large sites maintainable.

For this reason, we will be providing an Add-In after RTM that re-enables the ability to insert new Includes in Expression Web. In the mean time you can use Cheryl Wise’s snippet-based workaround for adding Includes, which can be found at https://by-expression.com/quick-bits/includes/index.aspx. Finally, in a future release you should expect to see a version of Include-like functionality re-integrated directly into the product.

Now, let’s turn to Page Transitions. It was our original intent to remove page transitions, but for technical reasons we decided that removing this feature was too risky this late in the release cycle. Please note, though, that we very well may remove this feature from one of our next releases.

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2006
  Erik:
  What can I say?  Thank you!
  
  Kathleen

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2006
  The other 'bot' that I'd like to see replaced with something offering similar functionality is the form validation. The aspx validators are there (and these have limitations)  but nothing for html. Some validation 'behaviours' perhaps?

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2006
  I thought EW had a site map generator built in, but if so I cannot find it. That would be nice, and should be easy with ASP.

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2006
  For forms in the meantime .. you might find this of use, it's free.
  
  http://hisoftware.com/access/valueadd9.html
  
  Tina

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2006
  I created a free macro that re-enables the ability to insert new Includes from the Insert menu in Expression Web. Inspired by the code-snippet workaround, this macro brings back one-click insertion of Includes. Enjoy! <a href="http://liahona.org/FPBotMacro/">http://liahona.org/FPBotMacro/</a>

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2006
  I created a free macro that re-enables the ability to insert new Includes from the Insert menu in Expression Web. Inspired by the code-snippet workaround, this macro brings back one-click insertion of Includes. Enjoy! http://liahona.org/FPBotMacro

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2007
  Hopefully better late than never: This sounds like the squeaky wheel getting the grease. I'm not normally one to complain about useful features being depracated.  I just dump the software and go to a competitor.   If I have to pay twice just to get something to work that should have worked in the first place, I get upset. Instead of fixing something, sell me something else that doesn't work???  I don't think so... Yet still ever hopeful

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 02, 2007
  Does anyone know when Microsoft will add the Include Page feature to one of the menus like some add-on companies have done? CliveS

• Anonymous
  February 07, 2007
  The comment has been removed