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(slightly skeptical)
Open Source Software Educational Society
May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
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May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
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Microsoft FrontPage is a very good, but severely underrated HTML editor that I definitely prefer to Dreamweaver. The quality of FrontPage interface is close to quality to Excel interface and that means that it is superior to other Microsoft products and many competitors. Tremendous amount of insight went into designing of this interface and it shows, although unfortunately some features you discover only after several years of use (documentation is not that good and does not emphasize innovative features present).
There will be no FrontPage 2007 -- Microsoft replaced it with Microsoft Expression Web. I tried it and for me upgrade is not worth hassle. I might be wrong but key deficiencies that I have found in Frontpage2003 are still present in Microsoft Expression Web. You may save money this way too (older versions of Microsoft products are discounted like used cars ;-)
Many people view FrontPage as a beginners tool. That's a completely incorrect view. While FrontPage is definitely "beginner friendly" it is in its essence a very powerful professional tool suitable for developing/maintaining complex and/or large (like this one) sites. It is very rich tool and after more then ten years of usage I still discover new possibilities and shortcuts each month. It has a built-in macro language and powerful Macro Programming capabilities.
I would like to stress it again: I am using FrontPage from 1998 and so far learned only tiny fraction of its capabilities. And in no way I would be able to support such a huge website with other tools.
Microsoft FrontPage has come a long way since it was first introduced in 1995. Each version was a significant step forward and now in version 2003 (seventh version) is a reasonably mature product that is worth every penny Microsoft is charging for it (again I do not see much differences between Microsoft Expression Web. and Frenpage 2003 and currently I do not plan to switch).
You can now buy FrontPage 2003 for the price of shareware and if you need an HTML editor you will make an excellent purchase. This is a program that definitely worth the price you can get it on eBay. This is a really powerful and flexible HTML editor with almost no competition (Dream weaver is definitely weaker and less use friendly; also it is ridiculously expensive).
It now support regular expressions in search (better late then never ;-) has better support of CCS (although support of external style sheets is still inferior) and you can open more than one project at once by simply selecting Window/New Window. You then can open a different project or page and drag and drop files between Folder Lists. You can also drag and drop or copy and paste content from one page to another.
Unfortunately Frontage does not support SSI: you can use then but if you move then page you need to correct path yourself, while for all other elements FrontPage does it for you.
Although many professional Web builders dismiss FrontPage in favor Dreamweaver, and Dreamweaver is somewhat better for working with CCS FrontPage 2003 is pretty competitive and it remains one of the most popular solution for editing websites. The problem is mainly is that it does not understand CCS includes but it works really well with "inline" styles.
To really get the most out of FrontPage, though, you have to know how to use some of its not-quite-intuitive features. For instance, you can work in two windows simultaneously, customize your menus, and create a password-protected site--but only if you know how to maximize FrontPage. We bring you these tips and tricks to help you use FrontPage.
You also do not need to use FrontPage extensions although their use is encouraged.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were introduced way back in 1996. A cascading style sheet is a set of instructions called styles in a linked external file or within the source code of a page that tells a browser how to render page elements - text color and sizes, page backgrounds, tables etc. they are very similar to Ms word styles and its a shame that even FrontPage 2003 does not handle external styles gracefully: it makes available only paragraph styles in the style selection windows on the toolbar (as well as in a special class selection window of the style toolbar). The most basic way of using CCS is to specify using them typical types of paragraphs. for example instead of
<blockquote><p><font size="2" face="Arial">
...text...
</font></p></blockquote>
you can use paragraph style:
p.quote { font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 50pt
}
By using a linked stylesheet you only need to change one file and then the entire site would be updated. Also if you decided to change the font to Helvetica 10, you do not need to edit all pages. You can do it in the external stylesheet. Generally using external stylesheet makes HTML markup tidier. Styles can also help to parametrize fonts, for example:
<font class="normal">
At the same time one needs to understand that styles are essentially a parameterless macros and you can imitate them (and do much more) using macroprogramming. Here is a function that can add an HTML to the page:
In FrontPage 2003, FrontPage 2002, and FrontPage 2000, this function adds any HTML content to a specified document, either appending to or replacing the document. It does this by creating an IHTMLTxtRange object from the body element of the FPHTMLDocument object. If the argument for the blnClearPage parameter is True, the entire contents between the opening and closing <body> tags is replaced; otherwise, the HTML is appended to the bottom of the current content, before the closing <body> tag.
The objects used in this example are as follows:
- FPHTMLDocument
- IHTMLTxtRange
- FPHTMLBody
Public Function AddHTMLToPage(objPage As FPHTMLDocument, _ strHTMLtext As String, blnClearPage As Boolean) As Boolean Dim objRange As IHTMLTxtRange Dim objBody As FPHTMLBody On Error GoTo ErrorHandler If blnClearPage Then Set objRange = objPage.all.tags("BODY").Item(0).createTextRange ' clear out the current document If blnClearPage Then Call objRange.pasteHTML("") End If objRange.collapse False Set objRange = Nothing End If Set objBody = objPage.body objBody.innerHTML = objBody.innerHTML & strHTMLtext & vbCrLf AddHTMLToPage = True ExitFunction: Exit Function ErrorHandler: 'Could not insert HTML. AddHTMLToPage = False GoTo ExitFunction End Function 'Use the following subroutine to call the preceding function. Sub CallAddHTMLToPage() Dim strHTMLString As String strHTMLString = "<P><B><I>BLAH</I></B></P>" + vbCrLf Call AddHTMLToPage(ActiveDocument, strHTMLString, True) End Sub
External stylesheet is a text file with the extension .css that contains a series of styles. When a page in the web links to this file, the browser reads the stylesheet before rendering the page. To attach a CSS file in Frontpage:
Have the page open in Edit (Normal mode)
Go to "Format" on the menu, select "Style Sheet Links"
Click the "Add" button
Navigate to the proper folder that contains the nessesary .css file, highlight and click "OK"
You can have one "master" stylesheet for you website and several "ad-on" stylesheet that are necessary only for a few pages. That prevents from putting in the mater stylesheet too many styles that are not used by the most pages.
Also you probably should avoid excessive zeal in using this feature. Stylesheets are a good tool but overused they make coding less transparent instead of more transparent.
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After ten years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage has been discontinued. FrontPage has been among the most popular what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) Web site creation tools since Microsoft released FrontPage 97 in late 1996. With its innovative use of server-side script and familiar user interface, FrontPage enabled users to create Web sites quickly and easily.
As the Internet industry has grown, so has the level of sophistication of the average Web site, and so have the expectations of Web designers and developers regarding the tools at their disposal. More and more, the industry is moving toward standards-based Web design as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). FrontPage served a significant need during its product lifetime. However, as the Web has evolved, so have the needs and expectations of Web designers and developers regarding tools such as FrontPage.
FrontPage is being replaced with two great new tools for application building and Web authoring. For FrontPage users who work with sites built on the Microsoft SharePoint® platform, there is Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. (For more information about SharePoint Designer, see the SharePoint Designer home page on Office Online.) For FrontPage users who develop non-SharePoint sites, there is Microsoft Expression Web, a professional Web authoring tool with features that help you design, develop, and maintain exceptional standards-based Web sites.
With Expression Web and FrontPage installed on the same computer, you can continue to manage your FrontPage Web site and use the new tools and features included in Expression Web to take your FrontPage to the next level by transitioning to standards-based practices.
Expression Web isn’t simply FrontPage in a fancy new package with a new name. Built with Web standards in mind, there are significant differences in how Expression Web works, all of which relate to building sites that are up-to-date with today’s standards and technologies.
To help you make the leap not only to Expression Web but also into the world of Web standards, this document:
· Outlines the differences between FrontPage 2003 and Expression Web.
· Introduces the Expression Web workspace.
· Discusses Web standards.
· Provides information on how to work with your existing site, including FrontPage Web components, themes, and shared borders, in Expression Web.
· Introduces ASP.NET support and data integration available in Expression Web.
Don't go looking for FrontPage in the just-released Beta 2 edition of Office 2007.
In a move which reflects the changing face of the Web, with advanced users scaling up to Dreamweaver and blogs becoming the new home page, Microsoft has closed the book on its 10-year-old Web site authoring software.
In its place are two new programs aimed at developers and designers, while Word 2007 now doubles as a blogging client.
Express yourself
Expression Web Designer steps up to the plate as Microsoft's new program of choice for building Web sites and is expected to ship before year's end. Unlike FrontPage, it doesn't belong to the Office family and isn't found in any of the Office 2007 bundles. The fresh-baked program is part of the new Expressions line, which also includes Expressions Graphic Designer and Expressions Interactive Designer. Demo versions of all three programs can be downloaded here.Its sibling, SharePoint Designer 2007, is aimed at code-cutters needin to create and customise SharePoint intranet sites and build SharePoint-based applications and document workflows.
Both programs have been built around supporting modern Web standards such as cascading style sheets (CSS), XML and XHTML support plus drag-and-drop ASP.NET 2.0 controls, as well as being browser-agnostic.
"FrontPage was very good in its time, four or five years ago when the Web was a very different place" says Wayne Smith, who left his role as a product manager on Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Flash to lead the Expressions Web Designer team. "Times have moved on, the Web has moved on immeasurably in the last four years and it's time to have a tool that deals with these new standards.
It's not just about browsing but also things like creating XHTML-based sites that get far better coverage in search Engines."
Smith says that Expression Web Designer is "aimed very clearly at the professional Web developer, especially the developer who likes to do the design part of the site as well. The entire Expressions brand is aimed fairly and squarely at the professional designer market. This includes designers who are far more technical than they were four years ago, people we call design-developers".
Frontpage will be gradually phase out after release of SharePoint Designer 2007 and Expression Web Designer. In the meantime, Microsoft will continue to provide current FrontPage customers with full product support through June 2008, as well as clear guidance on how they can smoothly migrate to SharePoint Designer 2007 or Expression Web Designer, depending on their roles and needs. Read more...
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To me, SharePoint designer is just Frontpage 2007 with some new features (for example, Workflow stuff for SharePoint 2007).You will feel better if you think it in this way...
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You might want to try Visual Web Developer 2005 which is free of charge:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vwd/
It can do the same thing that you can do with FrontPage and provide more functionality.
Creating and Editing a Webpage Has Never Been This Easy. With immense complexity of the application, Nvu allows anyone to easily create an entire website in a matter of minutes. Nvu can adjust to almost any skill level, as it allows you to work with the source code as well as a well rounded GUI that lets you drag-and-drop items from a template.In addition, Nvu comes with the following features that make development a breeze:
Mozilla Inside - In an effort to bring you the best speed and functionality possible, Nvu is running off of Mozilla's Gecko engine. This helps to give the developer the speed they need to get the job done right.
FTP Ability with One-Click Simplicity - Frankly, we believe that all HTML editors really out to be offering this feature by default. Nvu not only offers this, they make setting it up a snap as well.
Color Palette - Don't laugh, but having access to a decent color palette is a real life saver when you have no idea what the exact color value is that you are looking for. Seriously!
At any rate, you get the idea. There are a number of other helpful features that Nvu offers, but the list is way to large to try and go over in one review.
Whether you create complex add-ins to sell to users of Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 or write simple macros to automate your own tasks, you likely have needed to programmatically access the HTML in your Web pages. This article provides detailed information about using the FrontPage Visual Basic for Applications object model to insert, change, and remove HTML in your Web pages. To help you get started, you need a general understanding of the FrontPage object model. The following section helps you to navigate the FrontPage object model. In addition, you may find the following resources helpful as you create macros and add-ins that extend the FrontPage application.
Learn how Behaviors feature in Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 allows you to add DHTML scripts quickly and easily to Web pages. FrontPage provides an extensible framework that you can use to create your own custom behaviors. This article explains how you can extend behaviors in FrontPage. (28 printed pages) Dynamic HTML (DHTML) has changed the face of the Internet. Almost every Web page you look at today contains dynamic elements from images that change when you move your mouse over them to pages that can recognize which browser you are using. The Behaviors feature in Microsoft® Office FrontPage® 2003 allows you to insert scripts quickly and easily into your Web pages to help you build dynamic Web pages. You do not need any programming experience, and you do not need to look at a bit of code.In addition, if you insert scripts into Web pages by using the Behaviors feature, FrontPage manages these scripts. This means that if you delete a script event that isn't referenced elsewhere in a Web page, FrontPage removes the script from the page. On the other hand, if you accidentally remove a script that is referenced in an event somewhere in the page, FrontPage reinserts the script to eliminate script errors. All of this assists non-developers to create dynamic Web pages.
When you install FrontPage, you get approximately 20 predefined Behavior scripts. These scripts include drop-down menus, mouse-over effects, and a client browser check. However, you can do more with the Behaviors feature than simply insert predefined scripts into your Web pages. You can also create your own behaviors, and you can distribute your custom behaviors to others. For example, you may have a script that opens a hyperlink in a pre-sized window; behaviors provides an easy way to make the script available to everyone in your organization. Alternatively, you might want an effective way of distributing scripts to your customers that allows them to insert scripts into their Web pages without working with HTML code, or manage scripts in their Web pages to prevent them from accidentally deleting a script.
Understanding Behavior Components
Extending FrontPage Behaviors is as simple as creating an HTML form component and a script component. The form component contains the user interface for your script. This allows users to insert custom data. You may also use the form page to inform your users of what your script does and allow them to cancel without doing anything. FrontPage displays this page as a Microsoft Windows® dialog box.
The script component contains the scripts that FrontPage inserts into the user's Web page as well as the Behaviors API. The Behaviors API, explained in detail later in this article, is a set of functions that FrontPage uses to process the script. The API contains instructions on which scripts that FrontPage is to insert and provides any additional cleanup tasks that your behavior may need to perform when you delete the script. This file may also contain scripts that the form page needs to function, such as scripts for validating and canceling the form.
While you can put all the code for these two components into a single HTML document, for simplicity, this article discusses these two components as separate files: an HTML form page and a script file. This article walks you through the process of creating these two files to create a custom behavior. The behavior script that you create disables right-click functionality on images in a Web page. Learn the basics of creating the necessary form for the behavior as well as how to work with the Behavior API.
There are two downloaded Microsoft Frontpage tutorials:
Download details FrontPage 2002 Add-in Tutorial
Download details FrontPage 2000 Tutorial
**** Automating Repetitive Tasks in FrontPage 2003
Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out
Extending Find and Replace for Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
Getting Started Extending FrontPage 2003
Introduction to Web Technologies for FrontPage Users
Customizing Code Snippets in FrontPage 2003
| All Files - | create a table at the cursor location containing a list of all files in the web and their properties (similar to the 'All Files' report). |
| Sort Table - | sorts a table in Normal View on the column and beginning in the row that the cursor is located. |
| Breadcrumb Trail - | creates a breadcrumb trail from the FrontPage navigation structure. |
| Outline - | automatically numbering heading tags (eg. 1.1.2 for an H3 tag). |
| Navigation Tree - | creates an indented list from the FrontPage navigation structure. |
| Screen Tips - | creates a <span> tag and title attribute for selected text. |
| css Position - | moves an object to the document body and places it inside an absolute positioned <div> tag (Used to change your page from HTML layout to CSS2 layout). |
| Make VBScript - | convert the HTML on a page to VBScript Document.Write statements. |
History of FrontPage - FP Release Dates and Vermeer FrontPage History Timelines
FrontPage Historical Note: Development of the Vermeer FrontPage product began in 1994. 20 months later this happened...
"Charles Ferguson tells what it was like to create Vermeer Technologies, which produced one of the first software products that made creating web pages fairly easy, and then sell it to Microsoft for $133 million some 20 months later."
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Last modified: August 30, 2009
