IntelliSense for PHP
IntelliSense (Microsoft's version of code completion) has long been one of the most appreciated features of Visual Studio and EW1 also featured IntelliSense—just not for PHP. With IntelliSense, whenever you are in a code block, IntelliSense will display all of your relevant choices, as for example a list of properties (or attributes), methods or events.

Not only does this save you typing and eliminate the possibility of spelling errors, it steers you away from options which are not valid in the current context and offers suggestions which you may not have considered. As this linked screencast shows, this feature is also extremely helpful in learning (or remembering) a new technology because it will also point out where a particular construction can be used but is not considered optimal. So if you are not an expert (or even just a little rusty) in XHTML or CSS, this feature can help guide you to a more maintainable, professional result.

IntelliSense is especially helpful for built in PHP functions since it will show the list of required parameters along with their appropriate data types.

PHP Snippets and Built-in FTP Client
PHP snippets represent common PHP code items which can be inserted into your PHP document simply by selecting them from a menu list. For example, EW2 can write for you the entire PHP include (shown above) if you choose it from the Insert menu and then navigate to the file which you want to include. This linked screencast illustrates the various types of PHP snippets available in EW2.

EW2 also makes it easy to upload your final work product to a remote web server. Just specify the URL of the remote web site and provide the appropriate credentials and EW2 will open a standard FTP client connection to your remote web site. One interesting feature is that EW2 can compare the files in your development web site folder to the files at your remote web site to determine which ones are newer and/or different. Then should you choose, only new and modified files need be uploaded to the remote web server (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Expression Web's FTP client makes it easy to spot and resolve file differences.

CSS Support
CSS has long been established as the appropriate technique for separating content from formatting. However, the application of CSS can be extremely complex because of the potential interaction of one or more external style sheets, one or more embedded style sheets as well as inline styles (some direct and some inherited from parent elements). EW2's method of displaying the hierarchy of applicable styles and settings is capable of making sense of all these overlapping and potentially conflicting settings no matter how complex the applicable structure. The following screenshot shows the hierarchy of applicable styles in the section entitled Applied Rules (Figure 6). Settings from the selected style (.standardparagraph in this case) are shown in the section entitled CSS Properties. Those settings which remain at their defaults are shown as blank in CSS Properties.

Figure 6. Managing and selecting the appropriate style sheet is simplified with Expression Web 2.

Locating a style which you want to apply to a particular element is facilitated by the Manage Styles task pane. Here you can find a list of all available style elements, arranged either by the order in which they appear within their style, by element or by type.

A number of filtering options are also supported.

Add to this the ability for a developer to easily create new style sheets and to automatically link new or existing style sheets and EW2's treatment of CSS becomes extremely rich.