Microsoft recently released a starter kit for Expression Web which can enable you to quickly get a sharp looking website up and running. Out of the box, this starter kit contains a website template which can display the various offerings in a designer's portfolio; however, the website can be easily modified for other purposes.
The design portfolio website has three main parts: the main page which spotlights several "featured" portfolios, another page which shows all of the designer's portfolios, and a contact page which contains a form which gets sent to the email address of your choice.
The main page (default.aspx) provides a text area for a description about yourself or company, then to the right are several images that are displayed which spotlight your "Featured" works. The images that appear on this page are easily configurable by having the "featureItem" element set to "true" in the "portfolio.xml" file. This xml file defines the descriptions, images and links that make up the various portfolios.
A nice feature to this website is when you place your mouse cursor over a "Featured" item, a small window will "bubble up" and give you a summary about that item. The window also includes a "View Full Details" link which takes you to a separate page with more detailed information about that particular item. This additional information is also held in the "portfolio.xml" file.
The "Work" menu button takes the user to a page which shows all of the designer's portfolios. This page also has the "bubble up" window feature for each image which generates its own page after clicking on the "View Full Details" link. All of the items generated for the Work page come from entries in the "portfolio.xml" file.
The "Contact" page is your basic "contact us" type page. There are several fields for name, email address, comment and a dropdown box which contains various designer job titles. This page also uses a few ASP.NET validation controls to ensure the user has entered a valid email address and all required fields have some data. This page also uses ASP.NET controls to send the user's information to an email address which is configured in the web.config file.
The Design Portfolio website doesn't have a wide variety of content areas by default, but it does deliver a fully functional, data driven website with some nice eye candy features. Users can easily add more areas of content and tailor the site to their needs. The Expression Web Design Portfolio starter kit is a free download from Microsoft and can be downloaded here.
