| Product: |
MS FrontPage 2000 |
| Date: |
23/04/01 (46 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: So easy to use! WYSIWYG interface, quick access to HTML source, intelligent features
Disadvantages: Poor Netscape support. Requires server extensions.
Ah, Microsoft FrontPage.
The very mention of this particular piece of software used to incite me into fierce fits of violence and blue language.
If anyone ever used to suggest to me that I use FrontPage to build a website, I used to look at them as if I were about to tear out their heart and eat it...
Anyway, now that you think I'm a psycho, on with the review.
I remember a time when Microsoft FrontPage was so bad that people could (and did) write better web pages in notepad. You literally could sit down and tap your HTML out in notepad and come up with better looking pages than you could if you sat down with FrontPage.
With the advent of Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Professional however, all that seems to have changed. I have to say that I absolutely love it! Sure, it's not Dreamweaver (Which is still my weapon of choice when it comes to web dev) but it's so damned easy to use!
MS FrontPage 2000 means that anyone can now throw together a very nice looking website within a day - and it also means that you can make quite substantial changes to site structure without loads of really hard coding - due to intelligent toolbar components that can be configured through FrontPage's Navigation View.
There's no need to use the basic tags in FrontPage. Everything is taken care of as far as formatting is concerned, as it is a WYSIWYG package - IE you type things out on the page, or use drag 'n' drop to position your graphics, and that's pretty much how the browser will render it. You still need to be aware that people will run different resolutions, different browsers etc - and so it doesn't mean that you no longer have to test out your pages on a variety of configurations - but it does mean that you don't have to go to the external preview quite so often.
For the purist, full access to the source HTML is provided, so you can edit out any nasty anomalies that crop up (ve
ry) occasionally, and you can drop in all your JavaScripts etc without any bother at all.
You can also insert multimedia components (flash etc) without any hassle at all. There are a number of other server dependent components provided too, such as counters etc, but I haven't really used these enough to comment on their effectiveness.
It also has a handy little report on the estimated d/l time of the current page displayed at all times... and it just really is so accessible. Now the family dog really can have its own website! Sit Rex infront of your PC for an hour and he'll surely come up with something that looks pretty good!
FrontPage also includes a set of pre-defined themes, which are probably best described as Style-sheets that don't require you to write style-sheets!
They take care of things like menu buttons, heading font, page headers, table styles etc... just all the things you might put into your average style sheet. Some of them are quite nice (most are horrendous though) and they are customisable, so you can bring a unique style to your site without sitting down to write a style sheet.
And it's cheap!
£110 I think for the standalone package... much cheaper than Dreamweaver (although Dreamweaver is still far superior and definitely the choice of the professional)
It's not all good though...
This is a Microsoft Product - and like all Microsoft products, it doesn't really like NON Microsoft products. That means that you can get some very strange things happening when you come to view the pages with Netscape Navigator.
You also need your host to support FrontPage extensions. Most commercial hosts will support them, and install the extensions for free. However free hosting can be more of a problem. Tripod does a nice line in free space with FrontPage extensions though. Plus you get CGI access. Not bad for free is it?
You'll also need to publis
h everything with the inbuilt publishing wizard, as using FTP tools to upload can corrupt the extensions.
I find this a pain. I've lived with WS-FTP for longer than I care to remember, and I've come to love it. I guess the beginner would find not having to use FTP software to be a blessing though. All those UNIX commands rushing by could be rather daunting...
Overall, FrontPage 2000 is an excellent package, and most people will find it adequate. Pro developers should stick to Dreamweaver though... come on, has Macromedia let you down yet?
The time to go with Microsoft has not yet arrived, but on the evidence of the latest incarnation of FrontPage, it may be coming...
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