Expression Web 4 SP2 Brings the jQuery Goodness and Interactive Snapshot for Debugging

Microsoft released Expression Web 4 SP2 and it brings a host of nice features. The two that I'm really digging are jQuery Intellisense support and the Interactive Snapshot.

jQuery Intellisense

Expression has traditionally be a designer's tool but with the lines between developer and designer blurring, it makes sense for Expression to add support to one of the most popular JavaScript libraries out.

In their 2010 survey of Web Developers, Web Directions found that jQuery dominates—used by (an astounding) 78% of respondents.

Um..yea. jQuery is incredibly popular and adding it into Expression makes it substantially easier for users to build out dynamic sites.

Interactive Snapshot

One of the best features of Expression Web has to be the SuperPreview which lets you look at your site as it would render in any version of IE and Firefox 3.x. This was a snapshot though which was kind of tough if you were hoping to debug easily as it rendered. With Interactive Snapshot, you now have the ability to do just that:

In Web 4 SP2, we’ve added an Interactive mode to our stable of IE renderers (as well as an interactive Firefox 3.x). Interactive mode essentially puts Internet Explorer in a panel, allowing you to see and interact with web pages during the authoring process. Mouse-overs, lightboxes and animations all work. Simply saving your changes triggers a refresh of the panel. IE Interactive uses the current version of Internet Explorer installed on your machine.

While these are my two favorite features for this update, there's a whole lot more to check out so be sure to check out the blog post for details and give Expression Web a try.