FrontPage rating as a web design program. What do you say? 4

[precie]

Any time I hear reports about what is the best webdesign program to use, I always hear about Dreamweaver and hear to avoid FrontPage at any cost. Is there any truth to this?

 

[CoreyBryant]

Both programs add extra coding that is not really needed. A lot of hard core programmers use notepad & a lot do prefer to handcode it themselves. Some do not like FP because it is owned by Microsoft.

I have used both & also handcoded. I like FP better than DW & if you know what coding that is not needed - it does not take long at all to set up.

__________________________
Corey

http://www.merchantaccounts4less.com/promo/tek.asp

 

[kimmer7389]

I also like FrontPage for creating small easy web sites. I also like its publishing feature.

 

[BNPMike]

I use Frontpage but if I were starting over again I would use Dreamweaver. I've never heard any professional support Frontpage.

 

[Xemus]

The Frontpage vs. Dreamweaver debate is almost as bad as the Windows vs. Linux debate.
Both are good tools, both take critizism from people who write pages purely in notepad and text editors.
Both will create a nice site, if you spend some effort on it.
My boss compared the two as:
Dreamweaver is better for overall initial design
Frontpage is better for daily updates and content management.

I've used both and currently I prefer FP 2003, tho Dreamweaver MX is a very nice tool.

As far as BNPMike's statement that no professional's use Frontpage, check out our portfolio, done almost entirely in Frontpage.

http://www.itsak.com/clients.htm

http://www.closedsocket.com

 

[gwillr]

I have used both, and as far as I can tell, they are both very similar in their functionality...for me, it was just a matter of which one I got used to first,which just happens to be Frontpage.

Gary

 

[jesse45]

I love FP. I also have Adobe GoLive and DreamWeaver. Which are nice. But FP just seems easier to me.

And I agree with Corey, all these programs add useless code, but with some time and looking at it, you can get rid of the waste.

I use the FP version that came bundled with Office XP Pro in 2002 and don't really have any problems with it.

The site I work on sits on an Apache server so I don't use the "upload" feature that comes with it. But as far as a great program to make pages with I don't see me changing anytime soon.

 

[TheatreTech]

That is also pretty much the advice I give to any schools or organizations that are looking at developing websites. I came to that through extensive research done a couple of years ago when our agency was looking for a web design package on which to standardize for our own web design use and for the classes we taught on web design.

I made numerous contacts with web design professionals across the country, and found that they were fairly evenly split between using Adobe GoLive and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Universally, however, they advised against the use of FrontPage.

We have found that FrontPage inserts much more proprietary code into webpage files than do the others. Also, GoLive and Dreamweaver files seemed to be fairly interchangeable between the two applications with minimal tweaking. FrontPage files, due to their proprietary nature, took far longer to convert than the others. Sometimes the time involved made it not worth the effort.

FrontPage also seemed to have a number of key features that required the use of other Microsoft software, including server software, and FrontPage extensions. That limited the number of ISPs that could be used and still use all of FrontPage's key features.

The clincher was watching Leo Laporte, a lont-time tech columnist and Windows expert on TechTV (formerly ZDTV) on his ScreenSavers and Call For Help shows, give some not-so-glowing reviews of FrontPage.

In the final analysis, if you are living in a 100% Microsoft world, and all your clients use Internet Explorer for a browser, you're probably fine with FrontPage.

For my money, Adobe GoLive is the best of the lot, and that is what we finally settled on, and continue to use today. It's seamless interaction with the rest of the Adobe suite of graphics and publication applications gives it a slight edge over Dreamweaver. But I certainly have nothing bad to say about Dreamweaver. It's a great application, and I could highly recommend it.

 

[dbMark]

I'm an simple ASP programmer (among other things) and want to set my wife up with a program that she can use to write her own website pages, lots of pages, maybe password entry to some of them, a few links, a simple keyword search box, maybe a basic email/question setup, but no shopping cart or . She a great artistic designer but I won't even try to teach her ASP. The more she can do it herself the better. Please, I need some help on deciding what to get her that fits our budget. These 3 seem to be the top contenders.

Adobe GoLive
MacroMedia DreamWeaver
Microsoft FrontPage

My inclination is to get FrontPage primarily since I'm an ASP/VBScript/JavaScript coder. Is that a valid assumption? I need to decide this before I get a website since they usually offer Linux or Windows support, but not both in the same hosting plan.

Which to get? I'd like one where I can edt the page or underlying code. Do any of them try to scramble the underlying code so I can't do that? I'm guessing there's a way to add snippets of my own code into the page design, but if I do it outside the program, can it read it in and keep those changes for the next page revisions done inside the program?

What if I decide to use another porgram? How easy is it to take web pages designed in one program and convert them to be used in another program? Yes, I love options!

I know some code MS Internet Explorer allows either does not work at all in FireFox/Mozilla or behaves differently. Will FrontPage write code that behaves well with the various browser engines?

Other interesting threads:
thread256-636960 - includes links for templates
thread256-25739 - FrontPage vs DreamWeaver back in 2000-01

dbMark

 

[algraff]

A lot depends on several things, one of the major ones is how finicky you are. FrontPage is easy to use and creates good looking pages, but it does insert proprietary code sometimes and uses stuff that, although it works fine in IE, they may not work in Mozilla, Opera or other browsers.
I use FrontPage due to the ease of use and reasonable price.
The HTML code that FP generates usually doesn't do well on HTML verifiers and throws up a lot of error messages...but personally, if the page works, I don't really care too much about something that only the purists get upset about.
I think TheatreTech summed it up well when he said

if you are living in a 100% Microsoft world, and all your clients use Internet Explorer for a browser, you're probably fine with FrontPage.

Most of the clients I'm concerned about use IE, so I'll probably stick with FP for the forseeable future...unless the folks in the central office cough up the bucks for Dreamweaver

http://www.algraff.com

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[dbMark]

What about conversion issues? If I start with one package, then change to another product, surely they have a read-in, convert or import utility, don't they?