Avoid it like the plague, its MICROSOFT! ...um, wait a second (MS FrontPage 2000)

Member Name: ken275

Product:	MS FrontPage 2000
Date:	05/08/01 (128 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Advanced features at your fingertips, not only creates webpages but manages entire websites

Disadvantages: It relies on FrontPage Server extensions a bit too heavily meaning that some functionality is unavailable for the budding webmaster using just free webspace!

Microsoft FrontPage - everyone seems to hate it these days. Thousands of critical reviews, everyone loves its competition, for example, Macromedia Dreamweaver gets nothing but praise! The reality is, though, quite frankly, that everyone is wrong... ;)

I have been using MS FrontPage now for over 2 years to create websites for my clients. Not only is it an extremely visually attractive tool but it is also extremely powerful. There's no raw interface exported directly from the apple MAC in FrontPage (there is in Dreamweaver) but instead you get the tried and tested formula of the MS Office standard interface. What this means is that the program is extremely easy to get to grips with. However, once you learn how to operate the basic functions within the program you slowly begin to stumble upon reams of easily accessible power features which really improve your website rather than being just gimmicks.

The website management functions of FrontPage make management of your website far easier (and with MS personal web server or IIS allow you to test your website before you upload it AS IF IT WERE RUNNING ON THE SERVER!!!) Also, unlike a lot of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What you Get) editors, MS FrontPage displays an exact replica of the layout of your page in editing mode. Finally, FrontPage's integration into MS Internet Explorer means that a preview of your page is only a button click away.

Everyone seems a little too keen to slag off Microsoft, but I'm afraid those who ignore MS FrontPage are ignoring a tool which could aid them greatly in the creation and management of their website.

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