Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft^® Expression Web 2
in 24 Hours

Morten Rand-Hendriksen

800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46240 USA

Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft^® Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours

Copyright © 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33029-2
ISBN-10: 0-672-33029-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Rand-Hendriksen, Morten.

  Sams teach yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 hours / Morten

Rand-Hendriksen.

        p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-672-33029-2

  1. Web sites--Authoring programs. 2. Microsoft Expression Web. I.
Title. II. Title: Teach yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 hours.
III. Title: Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 hours.

   TK5105.8883.R36 2008

   006.7’8-dc22

                                                                         2008034613

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing September 2008

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Associate Publisher

Greg Wiegand

Acquisitions Editor

Loretta Yates

Development Editors

Todd Brakke

Anne Goebel

Managing Editor

Patrick Kanouse

Project Editor

Mandie Frank

Copy Editor

Mike Henry

Indexer

Tim Wright

Proofreader

Arle Writing and Editing

Technical Editor

Greg Kettell

Publishing Coordinator

Cindy Teeters

Designer

Gary Adair

Compositor

Mark Shirar

Table of Contents

About the Author

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is the owner and creative director of Pink & Yellow Media, a design company that provides digital media creations for small businesses and television. Through the years he has had many different titles: photographer, studio musician, composer, politician, writer, jeweler, philosopher, artist, and university senate member. But it is in the role of a designer he feels truly at home (at least for the moment).

Morten started designing websites back in 1997, but it wasn’t until he moved to Canada in 2002 that he really started to focus on web design as a possible career (surprisingly there were few job listings for Norwegian philosophy majors in Vancouver at the time). Over the years he has worked with many different technologies, but after being introduced to Expression Web 2 he has shifted the focus of the web part of his business almost exclusively to the art of CSS and blog design.

Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours is his first published book. You can also find his tutorials and other design-related musings on his blog at http://blog.pinkandyellow.com and in many different forums and newsgroups throughout the Web.

If you have any questions relating to the book, you can contact Morten by writing to [email protected].

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my parents, Marianne and Svend, who taught me that with hard work and determination nothing is impossible; Jan Tobiassen for being a friend when no one else was; The House of Lords (and Ladies)—save a seat for me—and Angela, my love, without whom I would float away like a broken kite without a tether.

Acknowledgments

There are times when I sit down and wonder: How on earth did I end up here? Closing in on the end of the journey that has produced this book I find myself looking back on a year filed with coincidences and random events that together have culminated in this moment. If anyone had told me last summer I would be sitting in my couch writing acknowledgements for a Sams Publishing book, I would have laughed out loud. Yet here I am!

There are a great many people whose involvement, however minute, has had a significant part in the saga that led to this book being published. Here they are, as they say in the movies, in order of appearance.

It was a fluke that I got introduced to Expression Web at all. When I was invited to attend an event for the Microsoft Expression Suite at the Canvas Lounge in Vancouver, I almost didn’t go. Yet this event would become a defining moment for my life as well as the starting point from which this book would eventually emerge. At the event I was introduced to Paul LaBerge and Qixing Zheng from Microsoft Canada, both of whom would take an interest in my work with Expression Web and offered help and support as I started digging ever deeper into the functionalities of this new application. Through Paul and Qixing I came in direct contact with the Expression Web development team and, in particular, Anna Ullrich who would provide invaluable help both with the application itself and with this book. Her comments and input on the original table of contents were instrumental in forming the book you are now leafing through.

During the fall of 2007, Microsoft did a case study on my company, Pink & Yellow Media, and a project I had created using Expression Studio applications exclusively. This study involved, among others, fellow Scandinavian HÅkan Söderbom who rode his motorbike all the way from Seattle to Vancouver for an interview. I would meet HÅkan again at Mix08 in Las Vegas where I also ran into Tyler Simpson from the Expression Web team who provided much needed insight into the technical aspects of the application.

Through all of these people my name somehow made it to Steven Guttman, the Production Unit Manager for Expression Web, who one day in March sent me an email saying that Pearson was looking for an author for its new Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours book. Hours later I was in touch with Loretta Yates who would put her trust in me as a first-time author and provided much needed help and support as the book took shape. In many ways this book is as much Loretta’s work as it is mine.

As the ball got rolling I got introduced to many of the people involved in making my convoluted and often incorrect ESL English (I am Norwegian, after all) into publishable material. These include my development editors Todd Brakke and Anne Goebel who make sure everything makes sense, tech editor Greg Kettell who makes sure what I say is correct and that everything works, copy editor Mike Henry who ungarbles and untangles my somewhat archaic language and horrendous syntactic and typographical transgressions, and project editor Mandie Frank who keeps me in line.

There are countless others involved in both the pre- and post-publishing process I have not mentioned, and they should all be gravely offended for not being named by name. Without their contributions this book would never have made the journey from my mind to the hands of the readers and they should be acknowledged for their invaluable work.

Finally I’d like to thank my friend Alexandra Oosterom and my brother Ole who have diligently read through each and every chapter of my unfinished manuscript and provided valuable input on my many inconsistencies and typographical errors.

We Want to Hear from You!

As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your opinion and want to know what we’re doing right, what we could do better, what areas you’d like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you’re willing to pass our way.

You can email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn’t like about this book—as well as what we can do to make our books stronger.

Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book, and that due to the high volume of mail I receive, I might not be able to reply to every message.

When you write, please be sure to include this book’s title and author as well as your name and phone or email address. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book.

E-mail:    [email protected]

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               Associate Publisher
               Sams Publishing
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