It’s true; Windows Me was a very rushed project and had countless issues with stability and general design. However, I hold up FrontPage as the worse product because it stuck around longer and did more damage to the web, while Windows Me was just laughed off stage by the general public.

FrontPage’s problem – or rather, one of its problems, for there were several – was that it targeted a novice audience and provided a WYSIWYG interface. There’s no problem with either of these things, it’s the combination that makes them bad. Contrary to popular (or perhaps, elitist) opinion, WYSIWYG can be a powerful tool in the hands of an experienced developer who understands the HTML/CSS behind it. In the hands of a novice, it easily creates two things: websites that are complete rubbish and web designers who have no real technical understanding of how websites work.

So when I first stumbled upon WebMatrix (Microsoft’s newest attempt at capturing the novice web designer audience) back in August, my stomach churned with dread. Memories of FrontPage came flooding back faster than you can say the word “frameset”.

After reminding myself that it isn’t fair to judge a product you’ve never used solely on the history of the developer, I decided to give WebMatrix a shot. Astonishingly, it’s actually not that bad.

The first major thing I noticed was that there is no WYSIWYG interface, which was a bit of a shock. The editor is essentially a standard code editor with line numbers and syntax highlighting for multiple languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It also has highlighting for a number of server-side languages including – much to my surprise – PHP.

Auto-completion has been added with the WebMatrix 2 beta and it’s more or less what you would expect from Microsoft’s IntelliSense team. It provides easy access to reference material for a variety of languages. I feel this is especially important with PHP because it has a very large, relatively unorganized, inconsistently named collection of functions that no human could possibly memorize. It’s such an important feature that I think not including it in the original release of WebMatrix was a mistake.

WebMatrix's autocomplete (IntelliSense) showing some PHP functions

Along with autocomplete, the WebMatrix 2 beta also introduces an inline colour picker.

There’s not much else to say about the code editor. It’s relatively light on some of the more advanced features that have become commonplace in most IDEs; code folding, for example, is notably absent.

With the WebMatrix 2 beta in front of me, I decided to try deploying one of the available CMS options. I went with WordPress for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to see WebMatrix working with a product not designed for a Microsoft platform (WordPress is powered by PHP and MySQL, both of which can run on Windows but it’s not the same as a CMS specifically designed for the Windows environment like DotNetNuke). Secondly, WordPress is something I’m already very familiar with (this blog runs on WordPress, in case you didn’t notice).

Site from Web Gallery

Because WebMatrix is bundled with an express version of IIS 7.5 (which it uses as a local testing environment), when I downloaded WordPress I was also forced to download PHP and MySQL versions for IIS.

One thing I noticed with the WordPress installation was that I wasn’t able to specify my own database name and credentials. This can be a problem on shared hosting where users are sometimes forced to have their database names prefixed with their username or something similar. In this instance, it was necessary to manually edit the configuration file after WordPress was uploaded to the server.

The upload was done over FTP; Web Deploy was offered as an alternative publishing method but once again, that’s an IIS specific feature and here we’re dealing with Apache on FreeBSD.

The FTP transfer succeeded without issue but I was very disappointed with the transfer monitoring tools (or lack thereof). The user is presented with a yellow box at the bottom of the window which displays the path to the current file at the top of the transfer queue along with links to cancel the transfer and to view the transfer log. It does not indicate fundamental information you would expect from the most basic FTP clients like how many files have finished transferring; how many files are still in the queue; the size, transfer rate or progress of the file currently at the top of the queue.

WordPress being deployed via FTP

Furthermore, clicking the “Log” link opens a static copy of the log in Notepad. There are so many things wrong with this. The log is not updated on the user’s screen in real time (you have to close notepad and click the link again to reopen the latest version). Notepad being a plain text editor, you also miss out on highlighting and a lot of other useful features often used in logging systems. The whole FTP experience feels overly simplified to the point that it’s just barely functional. I’m not sure if this is because Microsoft wants to encourage people to use Web Deploy or because they just haven’t had a chance to work on the FTP side of things. All I can say is the FTP interface needs a lot of attention.

WebMatrix's FTP log

With all of the above said, it’s hard to see how WebMatrix is really much of an improvement over traditional methods when it comes to deploying a CMS like WordPress. It uses more or less the same process but it seems like there’s more hoops to jump through and I’m not sure what the goal is supposed to be. Once you have the CMS installed you shouldn’t really have to do much more coding, if any at all (we’re targeting the novice market, remember). In that case, you’re basically using WebMatrix as a crippled FTP browser; even Windows Explorer would be a better option.

Getting back to user-created content, WebMatrix basically combines a file browser, a code editor, and a simplified IIS management interface into one package. The local project management works pretty well from what I can see and the tabbed editor provides a good coding experience especially given the addition of autocomplete.

Overall I think it’s a great project with a lot of potential, but there is significant room for improvement. I’m still undecided as to whether I would recommend WebMatrix to an amateur web developer. If all you’re looking to do is deploy an existing CMS like WordPress, don’t bother. Stick to the installation instructions bundled with those packages; at this point, WebMatrix adds nothing of substance to the process. If on the other hand you’re starting a site from scratch or you’re learning the basics of HTML/CSS, well this might just be the tool for you.

The Interface  

An important part of a web browser (or any application for that matter) is the user interface. It’s one of the most immediately noticeable things when you start the beta for the first time. A particularly awkward change is the relocation of the tabs to the right of the address bar. This strikes me as a little odd, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a very negative reaction from customers regarding the move. After some thought, it occurs to me that indeed, there is no reason that the address bar needs to consume the entire width of the browser window; however, to make the most of a tabbed browsing experience, the tabs need to have as much space as possible. Squashing them in next to the address bar doesn’t add much to the browsing experience unless you count the thirty odd pixels worth of vertical space saved, but on high resolution screens which dominate the consumer market today, the space saved is tiny and is not worth the detriment to the tabbing interface. You can actually resize the width of address bar, but you don’t want it to be so small that you can barely see the domain name. So the effect on the tabs is still quite strong, especially if you’re a heavy tabs user.  

The search box has been merged with the address bar. This is also awkward at first but I think it’s a change I can get used to. It does this particularly annoying thing where it goes straight to the “top result” in the search, but sometimes it just shows the search page. After a bit of investigating, I found you can turn this off in the search options, but in my opinion its inconsistency and unpredictability makes it a fairly useless feature to begin with.  

You may be noticing a trend, which is that Microsoft is going for a very minimalist approach to IE9′s GUI, cutting it down as much as possible so that it’s the webpage that stands out, not the browser itself. While this can work for some people, it doesn’t for everyone, especially power users; it would be okay if there was room for customization, but there isn’t. I really want to see the option to move those tabs back to their own space below the address bar.  

Despite the tab bar’s unnecessary displacement, tab management has improved. You can now drag a tab out of the window to form its own window, or drag a tab into another window.  

Dragging a tab outside of a window

 A new feature which IE  has desperately needed for many years now is a download manager. It’s such a relief to finally see this implemented. Downloading in previous versions was messy at best; each download would have its own window which couldn’t be paused, and support for large files (anything over a gigabyte or so) was virtually non-existent. Downloads are now managed in a single window and can be paused and resumed. A default download folder can be set to avoid the “Save As…” prompt you’re usually hit with in previous versions. Large files are now supported properly as well. Curiously enough, there is neither a progress bar nor a download speed indicator in the download manager, the latter of which strikes me as one of the fundamental elements of any download manager, so it’s a bit strange for it not to be present.

In a further effort to make the interface less disruptive, Microsoft has moved the notification bar to the bottom of the screen. This actually works too well for me, and I’ve heard similar comments from people in the community. Typically your focus is at the top of the browser to the middle, when content gets down low, people usually scroll up. Several times the notification bar has popped up and I have failed to notice it for some time. It’s great that the overall browsing experience isn’t interrupted, but notifications are important and should be a little more noticeable. This is another area where I think there should be more customization available. Given the option to move the notification bar back to the top of the browser and to set which notifications can appear would be an improvement.

Performance and Standards Compliance

Another thing that’s immediately noticeable when I first opened the beta is that it starts up much faster than previous versions of Internet Explorer. This seems like the first version of IE where performance has been a major design goal. Microsoft has replaced the abhorrently slow JavaScript engine used in previous versions with a completely new engine dubbed “Chakra”. At the time of writing, the IE9 beta scores 95/100 on Acid3 which is a significant improvement on IE8′s score of 20. Hopefully we’ll see that score reach the 100 mark in a future build prior to release. The beta also completely passes the selectors test at CSS3.info. The new engine has full support for HTML5 including the canvas element and various media components such as H.264 video. SVG is also fully supported, including both SVG files and inline SVG elements.

Hardware accelerated rendering makes for a much smoother browsing experience, especially on pages that are rich in content. For instance, since images are held in the GPU’s private memory, re-rendering pages rich in images is remarkably fast. The use of DirectWrite results in much nicer looking text.

There’s still some things that need to be ironed out but overall, the renderer in IE9 is a fantastic improvement on older versions.

Windows 7 Integration

One of the more interesting and unique features of the IE9 beta is how it integrates with Windows 7. You can pin sites to the taskbar by dragging a tab down to an empty space on the bar, much the same way as you would pin a regular windows application. Launching a pinned site starts a customized IE window with custom coloured back and forward buttons and so on. Sites can also have custom JumpList items, icon overlays, and thumbnail buttons, as well as the ability to make the taskbar button flash using a combination of meta tags and JavaScript. This works well with Facebook. Whenever there is a notification, Facebook adds a red asterisk-like overlay on the taskbar icon, which allows you to keep an eye on it using only cursory attention. I’ll probably write up a tutorial on how to use these features in the future but since IE9 is still in beta I think it might be best to wait and see what happens further on in the development cycle.

Some simpler Windows 7 features are also present, such as Aero Snap on tabs that you drag to edge of the screen.

Conclusion

As always, it’s important to note that when we’re dealing with a beta, we’re dealing with an unfinished product so you have to keep in mind that anything can change before release (although my experience with Microsoft tends to be that feature-wise, their betas are almost identical to the final product in most cases). Having said that, overall I’m quite impressed with this release. I think Microsoft can say for the first time in a very long time that they are at least on the same level as their competitors in the web browser market. The new layout engine and renderer and infinitely better than what was available in previous manifestations of IE, both in terms of performance and features. The Windows 7 integration is very nice and makes for some interesting web applications in the future. The main thing I’m bothered with by this release is the overly simplified UI. It works, but it just doesn’t have the necessary power and flexibility that I think a web browser of today should have. I really, really, really want to see at least the option of moving those tabs back down to their own space. I’m eager to see a future build, as this is definately a step in the right direction for Microsoft.

The primary focus of this particular iteration of Windows Live Messenger appears to be on integrating with social networking sites. Users can now attach their Windows Live accounts to popular sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Last.fm, flickr, etc. I even managed to connect to my WordPress-powered blog (this website).

Full View (bonus points if you can spot the advertisement)

The first thing I noticed when the client window opened was that it’s significantly larger than usual. More than half the client window is dedicated to social networking stuff (your contacts’ updates to Facebook, blogs, etc.). Personally, I don’t really use social networking sites so the change seems like a complete waste of space to me. Thankfully, antisocial users like myself are given the option of switching back to the old “compact” view. If you’re not fond of advertisements, you probably won’t like the full view, which displays a large ad below the contact list.

Your nickname can no longer be changed from the options window and after a bit of investigation, it seems that it can only be changed via your profile on live.com. This is probably to eliminate the hassle of setting up your name across multiple Live services. Other than that, the compact view looks virtually the same as the previous version.

Moving on to the conversation window, another large advertisement presents itself at the bottom of the window, pushing the input textbox up by about 50 pixels, which is pretty damn invasive. Fortunately, this ad can be collapsed and fully disabled within the options window, but in my opinion it has no business being there to begin with.

A typical conversation

One of the major changes to the conversation window is that all of the tools and options have been moved to the bottom of the window and tabs have been added to the top. “What kind of tabs?”, I hear you say. By default, conversations in the 2010 version of Messenger are all amalgamated into a single tabbed window, much like modern web browsers. This seems to be a much neater experience as opposed to having multiple conversation windows spread all over the desktop, but there is a certain level of utility in being able to have conversations in their own windows. You can switch back to the old system in the options window, but what would be really nice is the ability to drag a tabbed conversation out to form its own window, much like you can in Visual Studio.

Photo sharing has been polished, but I still think it should be an optional feature as it makes sending image files a frustrating experience. The character limit on messages appears to be increased which is a good thing.

All of the emoticons have been remade and a bunch of new ones have been added. There seems to be more animated emoticons now as well, so keep that in mind when looking at the screenshot.

For Windows 7 users, they’ve taken the status shortcuts out of the jump list and moved them into the thumbnail preview for the client window, similar to the playlist controls on the Windows Media Player thumbnail.

Overall, there’s some nice features that have been added but unless you’re a social network user (and statistics say you are), you’re probably not going to see a significant difference between 2010 and the current version; it’s still in beta though, so there could be more features on the way but I think that’s unlikely.