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Viridian's picture
66 pencils

Just how weird is Frontpage??

Viridian (66 pencils) | Mon, 2005-04-04 21:52
Member's Forum

don't you love that I am asking this on a Mac designer's forum? :wink:

Here's the deal: Someone I know needs help updating a couple of sites. The sites were made with Frontpage and this person didn't think I could help her. Obviously, I am a Mac girl and use Dreamweaver or hand code. I don't know what sites she is talking about, otherwise I'd go take a look at their code.

I have always heard that Frontpage writes weird code. Is this true? I have also noticed that web hosting companies always offer "Frontpage support" -- why does it need support? Dreamweaver doesn't. HTML is HTML, isn't it?

Anyone have any ideas?

thanks kids!! :D

suzy

Commenting on this Forum topic is closed.

Phosphor's picture
201 pencils
Phosphor | Mon, 2005-04-04 22:51

As I understand it, Frontpage has a tendency to encode a bunch of proprietary stuff that only works with a relatively narrow range of hardware and is far from W3C-compliant. Of course the code can be tweaked afterwards, but why suffer that madness in order to be able to serve a page that displays as consistently as possible across all sorts of hardware and browser configurations?

I'm sure Ivan will jump in, as he's much more well-versed in that stuff than I am, but suffice it to say I'd NEVER use it when there are so many other, better options for site building.

pompo's picture
998 pencils
pompo | Mon, 2005-04-04 23:29

FrontPage is crap...I did once an update on a site done with it and it

was indeed a big pain in da butt....

some servers offers forntpage packages so you can use the proprietary FP extensions for forms etc...

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Fine Art Framed New Orleans Photography
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You will know fear...Then you will know pain.
Then you will use a Mac.

pokie's picture
1198 pencils
pokie | Tue, 2005-04-05 15:42

You will definitely be able to help her. Just like DW, there is an option to view code only.

agtalpai's picture
57 pencils
agtalpai | Tue, 2005-04-05 17:16

frontpage's older versions were prone to generate a lot of crap (like word or publsiher when publshing html documents), but newer versions are said to produce cleaner code.

"frontpage hosting" means the hosts got implemented several features of msfp, like wizards. (dreamweaver i think offers ftp and db connection tools), so you can click-and-use these wizards.

as frontpage is a tool for 1.0, or non technical users, it has a lot of tools, wizards and crap like: photgallery, discussion boards, traffic analysis, survey, counter wizards: they're easy to use, but professional tools are better to use.

cleaning up frontpage code is not easy. i don't think you may fool around with sourcecodes, mirror the whole site, and use only the text with a simple copy-paste procedure.

good luck with your job!

ati

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my little blog:
http://www.notv.hu

Viridian's picture
66 pencils
Viridian | Tue, 2005-04-05 19:22

Thanks everyone! :D

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