Re Site Review of Front Page 2000

[Mike Feury]

Hi All,

I just read Allen's review of FP2000. Having used FP98 a fair bit, I agree with most of Allen's comments. However, I think the review leaves out too much and thereby ends up being unfairly critical of the product.

The basic problem is that Allen has reviewed FP2000 from the viewpoint of a web design professional - from which view I have no argument. Why this is a problem is that FP has never been marketed as a tool for professionals. It has been marketed mainly on ease of use, and therefore the review should have paid more attention to this aspect.

When we decided to develop our commercial website nearly 3 years ago, we were both website novices - had done a few free-host sites, messed around with learning basic HTML with EditPlus, that sort of thing.

Our basic need was to get our site operational quickly. Thus we passed up our first choice of HomeSite and went with FP98. We got our site up and operational very quickly, leaving us with sufficient time to deal with all the other issues of a small start-up.

Last year I spent some time with HomeSite. It's a really nice program - but I confirmed that our original FP decision was correct. We were too much novices to have been able to use HomeSite effectively back at the start.

Since then we've upgraded to DreamWeaver and converted our site to a DreamWeaver site - painless conversion, although we still need to clean out FP remnants sometime. Perhaps later this year we'll be able to upgrade further to CSS & DHTML.

Bottom line - Front Page did exactly what it was supposed to do. Provided us novices with the easiest possible path into getting a decent enough commercial site up and running quickly.

For what it's advertised to do, in my opinion Front Page deserves a score of 90+%.

[Allen]

Hi Mike,

Laurie is working on a review of Frontpage 2002. She is new at web development so she can put a different angle on the product.

I do not agree with your point about FP not being marketed for web developers. I deal with MS all day (and all night) and am pretty sure that they do market it for this crowd.

Anyway, let's discuss this topic some more once Laurie's review is complete.

(perhaps you would like to review some software or books? )

Thanks for your posts!

Allen

[Mike Feury]

Originally posted by Allen
I do not agree with your point about FP not being marketed for web developers. I deal with MS all day (and all night) and am pretty sure that they do market it for this crowd.

Now that you mention it, I guess MS will market anything to anyone - who knew?

As a tool for web developers, I do agree with your assessment - about its only possible use there might be as a speedy prototype tool.

Originally posted by Allen
Anyway, let's discuss this topic some more once Laurie's review is complete.

Sure thing - her perspective wil be interesting

Originally posted by Allen
(perhaps you would like to review some software or books? )

"Put your money where your mouth is" time, huh? But it's much more fun - and a lot safer - being an armchair critic
But sure - I'll be doing it for my own site anyway in the next few months, and would be delighted to let you guys use any you want Mainly software, I don't read many books on web work, prefer to read the views of places like here.

Btw, what's your stance on 2+ reviews for the same product? eg this will be my first big project with DreamWeaver, so it's a natural for me - but you already have a review.

[Till]

<flame>

frontpage=sqrt(evil)

Enough said!

</flame>

[Till]

Hey Mike!

The review is up at: http://www.htmlcenter.com/reviews/re...D=72&type=HTML

Special thanks to Laurie!

[Mike Feury]

Originally posted by Till
Hey Mike!

The review is up at: http://www.htmlcenter.com/reviews/re...D=72&type=HTML

Special thanks to Laurie!

Yeah, nice job Laurie CSS in FP the mind boggleth!

If Laurie doesn't visit here, can someone email her to change her "index..php" [double dot] to "index.php" [single dot] - site serves up her directory tree at the moment

[AlgSpkr]

Microsoft has, or is going to change their practise of targeting frontpage to experts, and will replace it with visual web developer. I do not believe that there is a current version redily available, but I downloaded the express edition of 2005 beta 1. It lacks some of the features that make FrontPage easy to use for novices, its wysiwyg iterface is a joke, but personally I did not use frontpage for that feature. And it removes front pages bothersome habit of adjusting your sizes to the units it decides are best. I find developer to be an excellent program, though parts of it are over my head.