MS Frontpage?

[Thalia]

I need professional opinions here. I've recently gotten a copy of MS Frontpage (it came in a software package I was given). And as I have never really used it before I would like to know if it would be worth learning to use the program.

Currently I hand code most of my stuff. CSS, PHP and everything else I rely heavily on refrence material, but I do know how it all works.

What are the pro's and cons of using this program and what are it's capabilities?

[Xuor]

While I have to admit that I'm not exactly much of an expert on Frontpage (I have never used it, either), I figured that I should probably put my $.02 in here:

Frankly, if you are already a hand-coder, DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT, switch to Frontpage. From what I have heard (and seen on Frontpage-built sites) Frontpage MASSIVELY bloats your site. Frontpage is really designed for newbie-types who need some help to get started or some such. An experienced coder would probably find the program more of a hindrance than a help. Also, Frontpage tries to make its pages so that they work practically exclusivelly with IE. You will almost never find a site built with Frontpage that really works with Mozilla.

If you want a WYSIWYG editor, get Dreamweaver. THAT is a real editor, and it will not bloat your code, and will allow you to view and edit your code at the same time.

However, I would recommend Frontpage to, for example, a teacher with a computer class who want to make a school/class website. I would recomend it to them because if you know Word, Powerpoint, etc., Frontpage is easy to learn. Also, it is a fairly decently powerful editor for beginners to use. It can do most things that they might want done, but can be confusing if you want to get something advanced done.

Again, if you want a WYSIWYG editor, now that you know your code, get Dreamweaver.

[Thalia]

Thanks :D I had a demo of Dreamweaver when I first started learning HTML. But then it all didn't make much sense. I think I'll try that one again. I'm just getting fed up with how time consuming it's getting. Grrrr.... Guess I'm getting lazy :p

Thanks again for the advice.

[TGecho]

I just aquired (legally) a copy of Dreamweaver MX. It's pretty massive, and it's a bit sluggish on my slightly oldish computer, but there's obviously a lot of power in there, even for a hand-coder like me.

[Anime_Lover]

Okay I know you will laugh when you read this being I think I am one of the "newbies" you spoke about, but here goes...I am taking classes online for html, css, etc. They are nothing compared to the advise I get as to what editor to use. If I tell you no joking I have Dream Weaver, Cutehtml, Front Page, Acrophobia, The evrsoft program and most likely some more I forgot to mention on my hard drive that isn't a lie!
My confusion is what program to use. I find that I now need to take online classes to learn how to use these editors. I cannot believe I got into this to just make a simple web site and it has turned into a major project just figuring out what editor to use.
Can you advise yet again as to the easiest and most comfortable program to use? I was enjoying Cutehtml until it wouldn't let me view correctly some graphic codes I had to do. So that program although simple wasn’t reliable so I am still with the others to choose from. I need manuals to understand the help files in Dream Weaver as well as evroft and Front Page. Oh forget the acrophobia I had to also install some Java thingy that totally slowed my old friend more then it is already so that program went to the way side.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel of html learning? Oh go see my 1st attempt at making a page. The link is in my sig.
Thanks all
:rolleyes: :(

[Tristan]

Going from pure hand-coding to using a WYSIWYG editor isn't that wise of an idea.

Pros

Your site will be built and managed faster and easier.
You wont need to learn new codes every other day for new features.
You can see what your doing without having to save and upload or in the case of a home server save it and preview it in a web browser.


Cons

You'll most likely start losing your coding skills.
You'd be putting your site and yourself to subject of ridicule by avid, coders with major egos that have nothing better to do than mess around with sites that were built with a WYSIWYG editor.
Frontpage is based on development with a web server with ASP and msSQL or more commonly known as access database extensions.
Requires a plug-in for php development.
You'll never see a bug in your code, because if there is one, Frontpage will crash before you see it.


So as you can see, The pros aren't very well comparable to the cons of using Frontpage or another WYSIWYG editor. But that's just my opinion.

-Tristan

[Anime_Lover]

Thank you Tristan. I think I will save all the programs to a CD and learn more by hand. Its more fun this way.
Debra:p

[DCElliott]

For the Newbies (and hoary old-timers, too)

This is an extension of some of my tutorial recommendations in a previous post, different thread.

The future of HTML is in XHTML and CSS. What do I mean by that, and what does it have to do with editors - I'll get there in a bit.

HTML was designed to display information on a computer screen. But that isn't the only way to convey information. We now have webTV, webphones, we always could print from browsers but why print navigation items - you can't click on a piece of paper!, and finally, lets not forget persons with disabilities, especially the visually impaired who may use screen readers.

Originally HTML was pretty simple, you had text mostly in full-width paragraphs on a 640x480 screen. There were only a few different types of codes. Semantic structure was pretty clear: Headings, paragraphs, lists, definitions, quotes, addresses, etc. Presentation or formatting had font, size, weight, color. We also had tables for display of ordered data. One of the early problems was that large pages became hard to navigate. If you had a large index of hyperlinks at the beginning, folks couldn't see your content without scrolling down a lot. A couple of methods were developed to deal with this - frames and table-based layout. (Stick with me - I will be getting to the point :)) Frames are OK but many folks mess them up and they cause all sorts of problems for users in trying to bookmark items. Table-based layout became an abomination as designers used tables to control very precise layout of page elements. However, tables require elements to be added in a particular order. This order is logical to the table, but is not logical in terms of document flow. Tables are also very rigid and required extensive use of graphics for textual elements to prevent changes in font size from wrecking the rigid layout. A picture of text loses information - especially if the designer does not provide a text equivalent.

XHTML addresses many of these problems. First, it allows separation of content and presentation. By this I mean that an XHTML file has no font, color or other presentation tags in it. What it does is use classes or ids applied to sections of text. These classes and ids have styles associated with them that control how they look and where they are positioned. Styles can also specify how the information is presented on different devices. What you see on a computer screen and what you print out may be different. How the text is read to a blind person may be different still. Your documents will make more sense to search engines. The code will be self-documenting if you have divisions with id="banner", id="left-nav", id="content" and id="footer".

So finally to my point. This is the modern way to do it folks. Unfortunately, all WYSIWYR editors that I have used (What You See Is What You Regret) turn out old style code. Trust me, in the short term it gets a page up faster, but in the long term it creates fat ugly pages that are hard to maintain. Furthermore, you have no control over what is going on "under the hood". HTML looks complex to begin with. However, much of the complexity arises from all the presentational tags that are in the code. If you learn strict XHTML coding your code should look very simple. (The caveat is that styles take a while to learn and there are difficulties arising from poor browser support for some parts of the specifications - the upside is that you can do things with styles that are impossible with ordinary HTML)

So I would encourage you newbies to learn to write code by hand. Use a syntax high-lighting editor like 1st Page to make things more comprehensible. Take a XHTML tutorial (http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_intro.asp) - it will make you get started off right. (And you long-time coders should take a look as well ;))

[TGecho]

I'm investigating a comprimise approach. Unless the editors dramatically change, I will always handcode my page layouts. It's just so clean and elegantly simple that way.

However, when doing mass text editing and formating, shuffling around heading tags and the such gets old fast. So as soon as I'm confident that DW won't mess up my code (MX seems fairly good about that), I'm going to take advantage of the powerful site managment tools available.

I strongly support what the others have said: make sure you know your stuff.

[Thalia]

Huh... thats some good info there guys! Thanks a bunch. Maybe I'll go back to my acehtml program. That was a nice one.

[Anime_Lover]

Okay you talk about learning by hand and I agree. What I am not sure of is what is the true purpose of programs such as Dream Weaver and Front Page? Also what do we use this site's program for if we are coding in notepad?

Sorry but I am so confused. The classes teach us the W3 way and now your talking another html way?

I am getting ready to learn the tables part of html yet in the other post this will be outdated?

Please explain what should I be learning and using and what will be dead to use. Ido so love learning html and css but if its going by the wayside then what do I learn and what am I doing here downloading this if you all feel doing it by hand is the best way?
Debra:confused: :shy: :mouthopen :hmmmm:

[TGecho]

Doing it by hand doesn't mean you have to use notepad (ignore the extreme purists on this one;) ) In my book, if you are directly interacting with the code, and not some program's interpretation of it, you're on the right track.

What we mean is: Make sure you know what is going into your code and how it all works together.

What is the purpose of WYSIWYG editors? Well, they're perfect for people who don't want to learn the down and dirty stuff, who have another job to do.

Fortunately, as long as quality web design is valued (even a little), there will always be work for those who take the time to learn.

What to learn? Go ahead, learn tables... for tabular data. Learn CSS and XTHML for layout. That's the future

Boy, did that sound melodramatic or what?:D

[Anime_Lover]

"In my book, if you are directly interacting with the code, and not some program's interpretation of it, you're on the right track."

I was wondering if you could explain this part. I am unclear on what you mean by interacting with the code? When I used CuteHTML I still hand entered the codes because I couldnt figure out how to have the program do it. I would start the page in notepad and then open it in cute, so I can view the web page when I clicked on the web icon. You can go to my page and view source and see its not the best coding but to me its a start. It got me what I wanted for a 1st try at it so I am happy.

My new classes on tables, boarders and something else start on the 1st so I have time to plan my real site pages.

In these editor programs, the codes are already in there and no work on our part is needed? Is that why people like these editors like this site's and DW and the others? If the codes are there already then why would using the program not give you the results you want if you are clicking buttons and telling the program what you want to have the page say?

Sorry if I sound stupid but to me regardless if you hand code or click buttons that have the codes you want it should all equal each other out not cause ugly stuff?

The reason I stopped using Cute was when I coded for graphics it wouldnt open just had white boxes with X's in them so I went back to the notepad and finished the graphics. Other then that the page looked good with the use of Cute.

Sorry to go on and on I will go back to my corner now.
Debra

[Astrolegoboy]

With many of the WYSIWYG editors there is trade-off between ease of use and efficient code. Most of these programs seem to generate massive code for simple tasks, one example is how Frontpage handles mousover buttons. It automatically generates the JS code as well as an external data file, then proceeds to handle the images thru DHTML. (talk about bloat)

I like 1st Page 2k because the automation that is built in is either based on commonly used parameters, or code that you input yourself. You can build your own code library and cut/paste. The main point being that it puts the emphasis on the code and learning what this code does.

As for the usefulness of learning about tables and other dated coding, you still need a familiarity of how things work and a knowledge base to build on.

Until all browsers are uniform and support every piece of code out there (will probably never happen) you will still need to understand the basics of html in order to cover legacy code.

Why do we study history? If we don't learn from our past and what others have done we are doomed to reapeat their mistakes.