Web Development Tools

[focusdev]

I'm looking at taking over a website for an NFP organization which was developed with FrontPage. Since I don't own FrontPage, and it appears to have been discontinued by Microsoft, I was wondering what all of you might recommend. The tool must be easy to use as when I deliver the site to someone else, they might not know HTML or CSS (which is why they want it done within FrontPage).

Has anyone used Web Expresions and do you know if it will work well with pages origionally developed with FrontPage?

Better yet, do you have recomendations for an Open Source web development tool that would work well with a page that was origionally built using FrontPage?

I'm starting to wish that I had never put my head on the chopping block :-/

 

[vacunita]

2 things to consider:

1. Regardless of what tool was used build the website, it obviously is nothing more than standard HTML (or normal browsers wouldn't know what to do with it). So any web development tool should be capable of opening them.

I'm not sure if Frontpage gives its projects a different extension while they are being made, but it should still be normal HTML at the end of the day.


2. Any web tool will take some time to learn. I would think any WYSIWYG editor can get the job done. Its just a matter of teaching them to use it.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[gmmastros]

My nephew develops his MySpace.com page with Microsoft Word. With Word, you can save as HTML.

I don't necessarily recommend using Word as a development tool, but if you want something that is super easy for the average computer user, you may want to consider it.



-George

"The great things about standards is that there are so many to choose from." - Fortune Cookie Wisdom

 

[j4606]

i havnt used it in a bit but at my last job they used eclopse which was open source.

http://www.eclipse.org

I don't know about the WYSIWYG editor but i think they should have a visual editor.

 

[jimoblak]

do you have recomendations for an Open Source web development tool that would work well with a page that was origionally built using FrontPage?

Microsoft's HTML in FrontPage is an unholy mess intended only for Internet Explorer - - so you may have trouble loading the HTML in competent editors.

An open source GPL app can be found at ttp://

http://www.kompozer.net/

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

While I agree with j4606's recommendation that Eclipse is good, it's probably a bit much for a non-professional (between 70-100Mb, plus extras like the WST plugins).

Why not download Netscape Navigator and try their composer?

Dan



Coedit Limited - Delivering standards compliant, accessible web solutions

[tt]Dan's Page [blue]@[/blue] Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/dan/

[/tt]

 

[focusdev]

I wasn't aware that eclipse worked with html. I'll have to find the extension for this and check it out. I've been doing all of my html by hand (and probably will continue to do so) for my professional development... but who knows.

I would also agree that Eclipse would be too much to handle for when the site gets passed on to another unsuspecting "volunteer".

KompoZer looks promising. Once I get access to the website, I'll have to see what kind of an effort it will take to manage any changes (without causing to many frustrations with the guy that is still using FrontPage). The big issue here is how FrontPage manages multiple pages that were built from one of it's templates. I'm not sure what issues that I might run into.

 

[j4606]

yah eclipse rocks we used the Aptana plug in for javascript/html. It had some cool features like mouseing over a javascript keyword would show a tool tip that displayed information like what browsers support the keyword, what it does and some other helpful things. Anyway I also looked at mozila plugins and downloaded mozile. It seems pretty cool. Doesn't exactly have the functionality of front page but still pretty cool, mozilla plugins might be worth a look.

 

[jimoblak]

The big issue here is how FrontPage manages multiple pages that were built from one of it's templates. I'm not sure what issues that I might run into.

If you are using Frontpage extensions on your server to make your site function with templates, forms, etc, then you may be doomed to need Frontpage for all future editing.

You may want to look to an online content management system like Drupal or Joomla (both GPL/free) to provide editing access to the client. A CMS will allow you to designate various authoring/editing tasks to different people. If everyone at the organization has the same administrator access when using an app like Kompozer or Eclipse, their edits can war against the edits of another.

 

[chrismassey]

Hey,
Not totally sure if you will find this useful, but I still create most of my websites using Microsoft Frontpage 2000. I developed a system where I could open these files (default extension is .htm) and edit them online using a WYSIWYG editor. I developed a webspace explorer system written in Perl in order to allow the user to edit which ever webpage he/she wishes.

I have the default page still uploaded to my site if you want to have a look at a demo. It is open source, and is extremely powerful. In fact I would say its the best WYSIWYG editor ever made .

http://chrismassey.co.uk/Perl/Scripts/ControlPanelV1.0/fckeditor/_samples/default.html

Chris

 

[jlockley]

Word is a mess for HTML. Tables rarely work, and it leaves proprietary droppings everywhere (take a look at the source code). I have used it to put document like text as back pages and borders, etc are miserable.

I have been using Nvu

http://www.nvu.com/

with minor annoyances (placing cursor, finding background color settings, etc). Having fair knowledge of basic html is good, since, for instance, it does not seem to allow for a title, so you will need to enter that from the source, which can be done directly. It support css and some java.

The program publishes to your ftp site.

A bug fix called Kompozer is available at

http://www.kompozer.net/

Nvu appears to have been free. I know I tried another program and just about went crazy. Hotmetal, which may or may not still be in production, was also a misery.

 

[grtammi]

Notepad++ is decent for Windows ... I like Bluefish on a *nix system though.

Notepad++:

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net

Bluefish:

http://bluefish.openoffice.nl

Greg

 

[jstreich]

For a WYSIWG (What You See Is What You Get), the best solution (and most common) is DreamWeaver. It does have validation tools built into it. It's probably a standard for Web Designers, but for development you need a text editor not a good WYSIWYG editor.

That said, most WYSIWYG editors are for the birds, and do horrible things like place spans with styles in (which is as bad as font tags - they don't tell you anything about the contained text). MSWord's HTML output is evil, non-standard and really messy.

Perhaps you should hand over a CMS with your template instead of an HTML template which they will bend and break a moment after they start using it.

[plug=shameless]

http://game-master.us/phpx-3.4.0/

[/plug]

 

[trollacious]

Word DOES have a Web Page, Filtered format to save documents as web pages now that creates a LOT less bloat in the resulting HTML. I downloaded an add-in for Word 2000, but the newer versions have it as part of Word.

I've done this with a couple documents, but always have tweaked the HTML to get exactly what I wanted.

Lee