Well balanced but Inflexible (MS FrontPage 2000)

Member Name: ILoveJackDaniels

Product:	MS FrontPage 2000
Date:	07/07/01 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simple, Fast, Easy

Disadvantages: Too Limited

I have been designing web sites since I was 13, and with now over 8 years of design experience behind me, I am always on the look out for things that will make my job easier.

FrontPage has developed over the last years from a useless piece of trash to it's current form, and as far as WYSIWYG editors go, it's not a bad one. As with all WYSIWYG editors though, it has it's fair share of problems.

First, the good things. It saves time, pure and simple. Once you have a design for a site, it is great for adding in new pages and editting text. That sort of thing is simply horrible to do in Notepad (my preferred web site design program), and I use this or Dreamweaver to populate a site once the design is complete.

It is easy to use, and for novices or people who don't have the time or inclination it is perfectly adequate for designing simple sites. Anyone looking to learn to design websites would benefit from using this. Once you have drawn your first few tables and put some images in a few pages, you can look through the HTML that has been generated for you and learn from it.

On the other hand, it is handicapped in several ways. It isn't as flexible as I would like. When I design a site (currently using DHTML type technology) FrontPage is a pain to use. It simply isn't capable of creating the types of design that cutting edge pages need to be using at the moment.

For this reason I still do all initial design work in Notepad. There is no substitute for learning HTML and becoming familiar with coding. At the top ends of design, FrontPage is restricting and this is the reason I am not a big fan.

It has uses, especially for new designers and those who don't want to add new pages to a site or edit long pieces of text in Notepad. For those who are new to design or don't have time to learn, I would highly recommend it. For those who want to learn to be good designers and need to understand how H
TML works, I would reccomend Notepad. For those who want to use a WYSIWYG editor AND need to do high tech stuff, FrontPage is not for you. Try Dreamweaver UltraDev instead...

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