From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Tue Jan 23 2001 - 03:05:17 MST
> I have a love hate relationship with Frontpage.
>
> I learned to write html by looking at source for web pages I liked and
seeing how they worked, which is the same way I learned how to write
JavaScript. I feel very comfortable coding by hand with full knowledge that
when I do so I can create a wide variety of pages that work in the majority
of browsers out there today. I also know that the pages I create can be
moved from one server platform to another with ease.
>
> FrontPage uses proprietary extensions to accomplish a great many tasks
which can make its code very hard to read/alter/migrate. On the IIS server
that we use at work,(I would prefer Apache on a Linux box)we had a problem
with several of the features from FrontPage breaking on a regular basis for
reasons that took us weeks to figure out and fix. Using FrontPage can add
huge levels of complexity to the Administration of a web server and having
had to deal with this I have learned to despise FrontPage.
>
> However, many of my cutomers/co-workers/students are not at all familiar
with the hand creation of web pages and wouldn't know html if it bit them.
With FrontPage these same individuals can create amazing web sites, complete
with chat rooms, message boards, guestbooks, and forms along with a great
many other features. This simple fact has allowed our intranet to grow at a
much faster rate since more people are able to place the information they
are responsible for up on the Intranet server into professional web pages.
Now, most of the Government specific information that I need for my job I am
able to get right at my desk with little to no hassle. It is the very fact
that FrontPage empowers even the HTML ignorant to create fantastic and
useful web pages that I love.
>
> While I would probably never use FrontPage for my own web work, I would
definately recommend it for people in a Microsoft environment who have
neither the time nor the inclination to learn HTML but do have a need to
publish.
>
>
> John Calvin
Good call.
I hand code, I admit it. I have to, of course.
However, I did just discover Frontpage, and it saves me heaps of time. Of
course, I have to inspect everything it does, and redo tons of it, but for
knocking up front end html, it's very good. So if I need to make a page
which needs to be very functional (using asp), and pretty, I'll start with
pretty (frontpage for that, to produce a skeleton page), code up any library
asp that needs doing, then put the two together.
Handcoding is good for generating html in any server scripting language,
good for doing the tricky/finicky stuff, but sorely unproductive for
producing the pretty interface.
Emlyn
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