Changing from DW to FP

[Melissa]

I read some of the other posts on the relative merits of FP vs. Dreamweaver;
lots of different opinions there! I’ve been asked to take over the
administration of a very simple website where people only need to be able to
look at schedules that change and to link to a couple of other sites for
forms. The present admin is using Dreamweaver (probably not MX 2004, maybe
the version prior to that). I’m a COMPLETE beginner here; I don’t know HTML
or CSS or any of that. My question is can I use FP 2003 or will I have to
use DW? I’m concerned that a) I can’t learn DW fast enough and b) DW is more
than I need.

 

[E. T. Culling]

Please don't begin a new thread. Stick with the other one that you started.
Eleanor

 

[Melissa]

sorry about that. I got an error message saying MS couldn't post this, so I
started over. Lo and behold, both posts appeared.

Please don't begin a new thread. Stick with the other one that you started.
Eleanor

 

[Brightbelt]

Hi Melissa -
I've used both FP and DW at different times (I use FP 2003 now) - I
myself am not advanced web designer but probably at the intermediate level.
For a simple website, DW isn't too much harder to learn than FP. But once
you expand into other areas like forms and form data processing, DW gets
harder than FP really quickly. A while back, I bought DW and first thing, I
transferred a whole web from FP into DW and then got to my forms page and
was informed by the DW newsgroup that I'd have to supply my own script to
process the form etc. FP has a way of processing the form data for you from
within the FP program. And my view is - that's why I buy software...so I
don't have to code !!
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, as you're making this
decision based on a fairly simple project, DW isn't too much to tackle, but
thinking down the road, you may want to consider FP, since it'll do alot
more for you without having to learn code. Not that I discourage code -
learning about code is a good thing in the long run and will save you some
time. But at least in FP, you can sort of do it at your own speed. Also I
believe FP is highly superior in terms of web management and doing updates
and re-publishing. Good Luck ! Frank
www.frankbright.com

 

[Al Krismer]

Melissa

I learned first on FP 2000 then took a course on
Dreamweaver about three years ago. I found Dreamweaver to
be much more complicated than FP. Just my opinion. I felt
it had more bells and whistles than I needed.

I still have a lot to learn about the more complicated
aspects of doing websites, but FP 2003 is a godsend
compared to the earlier versions of FP, at least in editing
the code.

I think in doing webpages you learn more through practice
than anything else.

Al

 

[Wes]

I think one of the nicest features in 2003 is the split view. You can
instantly see what was written. Helps a lot with learning code.