Front Page and ASP: Your Opinion 7

[jfrost10]

Hey gang,

OK, I'm going to be working on a website that I'm pretty sure will have some form of asp or asp.net code involved. One of the developers is really pushing to use Front Page as the main developmental tool for this. So my questions is:

What is your opinion of Front Page as a whole, why, and how do you feel it handles asp development?

Thanks gang,

jack

 

[AncientTiger]

Microsoft has wonderful tools, but what I've seen of their HTML edidors makes me sick. I can take two pages, same format, layout, and function...one made in frontpage, and one made by notepad (raw coding), and I guarantee you that the frontpage file will be at LEAST 2-3 K larger then the raw coded page. I've seen cases where Frontpage pages are 2 or 3 times larger than they needed to be. A lot of repetitive, unnecessary coding.... For all it's bells and whistles, I'll take Notepad as my html editor over frontpage.

Just my .08 worth

 

[spoondyke]

im afraid i have to agree with AncientTiger on this one. I've only used frontPage a couple of times and I wasn't very impressed with it. For general page design I would recomend dreamWeaver as it provides very clean HTML and is 500% quicker than writing raw HTML.
As for your actual scripting though, i would say the only way to do it is to hard code it. you get much more control over it this way and when the time comes to update the code it is much easier if you wrote it yourself. dreamweaver also highlights alot of VBScript and ASP keywords making it handy for the us who are prone to typos

 

[Ovatvvon]

dreamweaver is good. Interdev, part of the visual studio package is very good also...

I personally would never use frontpage. That's a low grade editor. To be honest, I just don't like using editors period...although they are faster initially, it takes me longer to catch up once the framework is designed cause I have to figure out how the editor has designed and named objects....then I have to work around that with all my schemes. Coding yourself is much easier...but I believe interdev is one of the best editors out there (personally).

The coding is going to change with the .net framework. you can certainly still code, but it may end up being easier to use the editors with them than coding it. Still working on getting visual studio.net from cdw...they aren't offering it yet. :-(

-Ovatvvon :-Q

 

[dilettante]

LOL!

My guess is that a lot of people try to just pick up a tool and bang away at it, with no training and little effort to study it first. As a result they often have little concept of the tool's power and limitations.

It is a lot like people who think they know Word, then when you get a document from them you find they've put hard-returns at the end of each line of text and sort of randomly use tabs and spaces to get things to "line up" - only to cry when they try printing on a different printer and it all falls apart. And watch the fireworks when you ask them to revise anything!

IMHO nobody should even bother trying to do ASP without InterDev, especially if they are building actual Intranet applications that use a lot of database access and need to display tables of the resulting data. Databound controls are wonderful timesavers and you can use them to gain a lot of power with a small effort. Of course you have to actually understand the tool first. The design-time controls are complex and powerful.

I'm often amazed at what people produce in ASP with a lot of heavy low-level plinking around. They sometimes get some really good stuff. But again try asking them to revise it and they'll burst out in tears! They use tons of hand-coded loops, often they'll have oodles of <% %> brackets all through the darned HTML, you get a maintenance nightmare! There is a lot of low-productivity ASP out there.

These people are going to die when they move to ASP+ (now called ASP.Net). You just can't hack and slash anymore. You have to write your code separately from your HTML, much as with VB6's WebClasses. That's really what ASP.Net is: VB6 WebClasses, enhanced and extended, and made available in other languages besides VB through the use of the CLR instead of the VB6 runtime.

Ok. But if you have a medium-sized ASP site to build you need a consistent look and feel, as well as navigation. This is NOT where InterDev shines. For this you use FrontPage.

As a matter of fact, you use FrontPage Themes! No, not the silly &quot;personal web site&quot; themes that come with the product. You need to create your own. Usually you'll need to hand-build the banner, misc, and button graphics, but you have that to do with any decent site.

The whole site should be constructed and maintained as a FrontPage web. I create the web initially in InterDev to get all the proper component directories built and populated. Then I open the same web in Frontpage and start working. Once the theme is built, the navigation structure set up, the web map built, and the pages fleshed out as HTMs... it is time for InterDev again. This is where you change individual HTMs to ASPs and begin adding the logic.

From there you do nearly all look/feel changes and add new pages or navigation in FrontPage. Even a lot of simple ASP maintenance can be done in FrontPage. But if you need to rework a lot of code or add new ASP functionality, it's back to InterDev.

The tools complement each other well.

You can use another HTML edting tool along with InterDev, but very few of them are properly &quot;aware of&quot; ASP issues.


Now if you have just a few ASP pages to hack out here and there you can use other tools, and there are a few high-end tools that really do understand what ASP applications are all about. But once again IMHO the combination of FrontPage and InterDev is hard to beat for ASP development.

As with any tool though, you have to really understand it to take advantage of it. I use NotePad myself for many chores - it is hard to beat for simplicity and quick/dirtyness. But it can be like building a house with just a hammer and saw. Frontpage and InterDev give you power tools and modular components. Who builds their windows and doors and plumbing fixtures from scratch with hammer and saw? Nobody.

And so the NotePad-based ASP dveloper ends up with tarpaper shack applications that need a lot of patching, that tend to fall down a lot, that don't meet code, have no running water or heat, and that no woman would want to live in ;-)

But if all you need is a doghouse... well why the heck would you make the invesment in learning carpentry and buying expensive tools? The hammer and saw are all you really need.

But I'll bet these NotePad-johnnies don't know what _scriptlibrary is for, don't use the PageObject object, and have probably never heard of Remote Scripting! Luckily ASP.Net will help by giving them this stuff by magic. But only if they use the .Net IDE instead of NotePad!

The moral: There is a heck of a lot to learn about this stuff. And it takes more time than I have! Somebody teaches me something new almost every darned day.

 

[Dynapen]

Personally, if you know how to write the ASP then it doesn't really matter what you use. You can code it just a quick in Frontpage as you can in Dreamweaver, InterDev (my choice), or Notepad.

The part you need to watch out for is this. If you use frontpage, and open a table in HTML, and then need to close that table inside the ASP code, frontpage won't see that you have closed it and will add a </table> in there for you. You can probably turn this feature off, but I haven't really looked to see where.

Best reason to go to InterDev. If you are just learning how to write ASP, and you start typing a command, you get the tool boxes that will help tell you what all your options are.

Write a simple Response. command in Interdev, and it will tell you exactly what clauses can come behind that. You won't get that in frontpage, dreamweaver, and definitely not in Notepad. It's a good way to speed up your coding, becuase it will autocomplete, but more importantly it will help you learn all the things ASP can do. You never know you might find a faster way to do something and go from there.

I would recommend Interdev, but as long as you are aware that Frontpage will &quot;help&quot; re-write your code, it works fine, I used it for a long time.

 

[schase]

Personally, I have a thing against Front Page. and while I agree with most items said above. I'll never consider FrontPage again. but like I said, thats just me.

I personally use Dreamweaver UltraDeveloper4. Makes drop and drag ASP easy, but it is a one-size-fits-all type of code, and when it goes wrong, you gotta redo the stuff.

But UD4 has it's limits, so finding code is necessary for some items. But it lets me get a asp page up quickly, and tweak by hand later on. Which is how I learn.

I've heard really good things about InterDev. Although I have unconfirmed rumors that a fair portion of web hosts will not allow interdev extensions.

 

[jfrost10]

Thanks for the responses guys.

So far I pretty much agree with all of you (heh, well, except for the InterDev stuff...once you go VS.NET, you'll never go back )

I'm pretty confident in my asp skills, but I know that my colleague has none beyond html. One thing that we're trying to nail down is whether or not we should use Front Page to allow the users an easier route to updating information on the site on their own. She figures that Front Page will be the easiest for this, and maybe it is (for users that really aren't tech savvy at all). I'm a bit more of hte opinion that this should be more data-base driven with more custom UI implemented.

Any thoughts on that?

Thanks again,

Jack

 

[schase]

Front page is indeed very easy to start with.

So isnt Dreamweaver for that matter.

Why not download some trials and feel it out before purchasing?

 

[jfrost10]

I've used both actually, and to be honest I'd rather use notepad if I couldn't use VS.NET

However, my bias is mostly an opinion thing, and the girl I'm working with (who is much older than I am and is set back in the &quot;static pages are the norm&quot; way of thinking) doesn't see it my way. I'm really trying to get some extra backup to tell her that although Front Page is an ok tool, it's very much legacy and we can do alot more with asp and asp.net code.


Jack

 

[snowboardr]

I personaly like Dreamweaver ultradev for all my editing, its much like Dreamweaver which I have used in the past alot. Yet, it gives you ASP coloring which is very nice unlike Frontpage which colors your ASP code one color.

-Good luck

 

[AncientTiger]

This, in a way falls back to the age old debate... what's best, the pistol or the revolver? Each has it's strenghts and weaknesses. Which would be best to develop a full blown web application? Dreamweaver or Notepad? Each has it's strengths and weaknesses. I guess it's just what you're used to, and what your comfortable with. I don't recommend that ANYONE jump into the editor pool without first having a solid understanding of how to do a site in RAW CODE. The knowledge you gain, and the understanding you have of the structure/logic flow of programming will save your asp

If you're comfortable using dreamweaver, use dreamweaver. But have you dreamweaver fans ever encountered problems that you just can't explain? Have you ever just deleted and started over? Have you ever just pushed back from your keyboard and said, &quot;I don't why the heck this is doing this!&quot;? Betcha a solid RAW CODE programmer could tell you in a heartbeat. But of course, as a raw coder, I've NEVER had to push back and say &quot;Why the heck is this doing this???&quot;

(BTW, Yes I DO prefer the revolver )

 

[snowboardr]

I have had a few problems as far as the design in ultradev, but nothing i couldnt fix. You always got the code you can edit to fix a problem.

 

[CDN]

 

[RushiShroff]

For initial 2 years I had been coding HTML in interdev without using any tool to generate HTML.
And i strongly suggest for the tyro developers-beginners to practice this habit so that they can feel & undestand every angle of HTML.
But for the last 1 year I have sen that speed is also critical.So I use dreamwaver for initial development phase.
When pages are statically developed (This time they are in primary stage),I can open my interdev and do whatever I want with my code.
My opinion about front page compared to Dreamwaver is not so good.
Rushi Shroff Rushi@emqube.com
&quot;Life is beautiful.&quot;

 

[Cheech]

In my humble opinion &quot;Ultradev&quot; Live long and make your kids suffer..

 

[snowboardr]

Only thing that is not good in ultradev...is that if you do a site all on one page ie..with queryStrings... after you hit line number 764 it stops coloring your code! And also it doesnt support < iframes > yet..

 

[Dynapen]

More on the original point that started this second effort. If you are trying to make it easy for other users to update with their information, let them do it on the database side. It is much easier to update info in a DB table, than to try to rewrite the code. And there is alot less that they can screw up for you. The more flexibility you can get by making the database generate the pages the better. You can even write your HTML in a table cell and produce it that way.

 

[jfrost10]

I agree with you Dynapen, having them just store the information in the database would be the best way.

This colleague is gunning for Front Page mainly because of its Word-like interface (so the users can just open the page and directly change the text in Front Page's editor (not the html editor, the graphical one).

Thanks for the input.


Jack

 

[AncientTiger]

I would recommend setting up administrative tools for the database, or record entry tools in other words in a ASP page set, rather than giving users direct access to the database. It's been my experience that some (not all) users are dangerous with too much power in their hands. How would your DB fair if a well-meaning (but not too bright) user decides to delete a column of data in a table 'cause &quot;we don't use that anymore&quot;? Think all those ASP pages that are calling for that column will crash? You bet. Think the developers will have a nightmare trying to figure out what went wrong with their code? You bet.

Whatever editor or raw code you decide to use, make everything idiot proof. Make it utterly impossible for 'em to dork up the database, or the programming flow by putting alphanumerics in a numeric value field. You'll save yourself a LOT of headaches in the long run.