A Tangled Web

From the Oct. 2008 Issue

There’s a war of sorts raging over which platform will dominate the next generation of websites.

One contender is certainly the original Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. But there is also new competition from Ajax, an advanced version of JavaScript. There is Adobe Systems’ Flash, which began as a format for multimedia and grew from there. And there is Microsoft SilverLight, a newcomer that the folks in Redmond would like to see become a major force.

Which of these platforms will dominate is a question of vital importance to web designers. But the more critical question for most accounting firms is what program will give them an easy way to create and update websites for the firm or for clients or simply to have some working knowledge of how to get documents online. A lack of knowledge in this area could brand an accountant as a 21st Century Luddite — the kind of non-technical person stuck using an AOL mailbox as that online service slowly dies.

There was a time when literally dozens of HTML editors were available for little or nothing. Simply drop in the pictures and text, upload the file to a website using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application, and you were done. But then the market for these programs largely died, FTP became a little-used way of sending files, and life got complicated for small businesses. What then to do?

The answer is and should be Microsoft Expression Web. The successor to the popular FrontPage website management program, Expression Web 2.0 has improved vastly since the first, less-effective versions. It offers simplified navigation, strong tools and nearly painless website updating. But Expression Web also has a drawback in that it has been designed for use by high-end web designers. It competes well with design packages such as DreamWeaver, but the learning curve can be steep and training tools are, at least to date, not up to the task.

For firms that can’t afford a full-time web manager, this is a major problem. It’s a problem that will be solved eventually, when Microsoft has time to develop better training or even a “light” version of Expression Web for the novice. In the meantime, there are three work-arounds that may help bridge the gap.