May Contain Nuts

A list of facts, for your consideration:

1. Microsoft discontinued their FrontPage product following Office 2003′s release.
2. Microsoft replaced FrontPage with Expression Web.
3. Microsoft officially deprecated FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) in 2006.
4. IIS 7 lists FPSE as an unsupported feature.
5. IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2 won’t even run FPSE.
6. IIS 7 has integrated WebDAV support.
7. Expression Web supports WebDAV connectivity.
8. Visual Studio 2005 does not support WebDAV, but supports FPSE.
9. Visual Studio 2008 does not support WebDAV, but supports FPSE.
10. Visual Studio 2010 does not support WebDAV, but supports FPSE.

Microsoft, you are a multi-billion dollar company. How hard is it to get your software IDE team to talk to your server OS and webserver platform development teams to actually provide consistent support for connection types across your product line?

Frankly, it is inexcusable for you to have a professional product that costs thousands of dollars fail to support such a basic and fundamental internet connectivity method as WebDAV, but soldier on with FrontPage Server Extensions over 4 years after they were officially deprecated (by you, no less!), and 2 years after you released a version of your operating system that won’t even run them anymore.

I realize that it isn’t the end of the world for IIS 7 to not support one of your flagship development platform’s primary internet connectivity options, but seriously, it comes across as incredibly lazy and unprofessional. Get your act together, guys.