Front Page or a competitor's product?

[Tom]

I hope I don't run into MSFT Sales on this question. I have recently replaced
my laptop and upgraded from WIN98 to XP and from Office 2000 to 2003. I
published a small business web site from the laptop and used FP2000. I've
been thinking about upgrading from FP2000 to 2003 also. Since I'm in the
market I wonder whether to keep using FP or go to something else.

I have a small retail business and currently use the site only for brochuring
our catalog. I don't need much sophistication at present but want our
customers to get a bit of "wow" when they visit.

Here's the question: For a small potatoes, business web site, is FP 2003 all
the tool I will need to handle.

I've found FP2000 to be a bit cumbersome to do page layouts with and I had
to manually build my screen-by-screen navigational system (the built-in
navigational boarders were just too limiting.) Is FP2003 significantly more
user (developer) friendly?

Should I just stop looking to spend a lot more money on products like
Dreamweaver? Is there an easy to understand set of criteria that would lead
to an answer as to whether to pay the price for one of the big boys or stick
with one I'm at least somewhat familier with?

I'm not looking for a feature-by-feature comparison. Just some
practical sense.

Hoping to get an unbiased answer...

Th

 

[JDR]

Tom,

Both FrontPage and Dreamweaver and solid development tools and they both
have their strengths. To me the question would be, do you want to spend
$399.00 for Dreamweaver and start all over learning a new development tool.
Dreamweaver also offers a trila version, so if you feel compelled to try it,
there is no cost.

Since you have FP 2000, you are eligible for the upgrade to FP 03 for
$109.00 and since you have worked with FrontPage before, your learning curve
will not be dramatic.

As for building pages (build my screen-by-screen navigational system ), you
may want to look at FP 03's new Dynamic Web Template or you could use File
Includes for your navigation, which have been available in previous versions.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010775891033.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010830191033.aspx

Convert a Web site from Shared Borders to Dynamic Web Templates (Author Jim
Buyens)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011277231033.aspx

Hope it helps
JDR
******************

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Hi Tom,

From your description, it sounds like you are not entirely familiar with
HTML development. So, it's hard to discern what exactly you mean by "user
friendly." If you mean by that that the product should enable you to create
web pages with little or no knowledge of HTML, there isn't one. Well,
FrontPage comes closest, but most people don't want cookie-cutter web sites.
The conflict arises because anything but cookie-cutter sites requires HTML
knowledge. FrontPage is the easiest toolkit to use, but that doesn't make it
easy to use. It's kind of like talking about the lowest mountain peak in the
Himalayas.

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.

I hope I don't run into MSFT Sales on this question. I have recently
replaced
my laptop and upgraded from WIN98 to XP and from Office 2000 to 2003. I
published a small business web site from the laptop and used FP2000. I've
been thinking about upgrading from FP2000 to 2003 also. Since I'm in the
market I wonder whether to keep using FP or go to something else.

I have a small retail business and currently use the site only for
brochuring
our catalog. I don't need much sophistication at present but want our
customers to get a bit of "wow" when they visit.

Here's the question: For a small potatoes, business web site, is FP 2003 all
the tool I will need to handle.

I've found FP2000 to be a bit cumbersome to do page layouts with and I had
to manually build my screen-by-screen navigational system (the built-in
navigational boarders were just too limiting.) Is FP2003 significantly more
user (developer) friendly?

Should I just stop looking to spend a lot more money on products like
Dreamweaver? Is there an easy to understand set of criteria that would lead
to an answer as to whether to pay the price for one of the big boys or stick
with one I'm at least somewhat familier with?

I'm not looking for a feature-by-feature comparison. Just some
practical sense.

Hoping to get an unbiased answer...

Th

 

[Murray]

Tom:

I'll add my 2 cents to the other excellent advice you have gotten.

If you know HTML and ancillary web technologies (like javascript), then it
won't matter which tool you use.

If you intend to develop websites as a professional and charge people for
them, *AND* if you know HTML and js, then (in my opinion) you will find that
Dreamweaver is more flexible than FP, and that the DW user interface gets in
your way less frequently than the FP user interface does.

If you do not know HTML and are not comfortable working with javascript (not
necessarily actively), then I think if you are familiar with FP already, you
are best advised to stick with FP.

--
Murray

I hope I don't run into MSFT Sales on this question. I have recently
replaced
my laptop and upgraded from WIN98 to XP and from Office 2000 to 2003. I
published a small business web site from the laptop and used FP2000. I've
been thinking about upgrading from FP2000 to 2003 also. Since I'm in the
market I wonder whether to keep using FP or go to something else.

I have a small retail business and currently use the site only for
brochuring
our catalog. I don't need much sophistication at present but want our
customers to get a bit of "wow" when they visit.

Here's the question: For a small potatoes, business web site, is FP 2003 all
the tool I will need to handle.

I've found FP2000 to be a bit cumbersome to do page layouts with and I had
to manually build my screen-by-screen navigational system (the built-in
navigational boarders were just too limiting.) Is FP2003 significantly more
user (developer) friendly?

Should I just stop looking to spend a lot more money on products like
Dreamweaver? Is there an easy to understand set of criteria that would lead
to an answer as to whether to pay the price for one of the big boys or stick
with one I'm at least somewhat familier with?

I'm not looking for a feature-by-feature comparison. Just some
practical sense.

Hoping to get an unbiased answer...

Th

 

[Tom]

Thanks JDR

I understand with my ability to upgrade FP2000 the price
difference is $300. That alone will probably swing my
decision.

I'm self-taught in FP so I'm certain I'm only using a
fraction of what the tool will allow. What I remember
being most time consuming was building the navigation
system for the site. My first attempt to make it user
friendly was to move from the navigation system FP2000
allowed where you place a navigation bar in a border. I
wanted it to operate more like a site map, with all the
top navigational links for all the sections of
the "catalog" shown on each page. When a user navigated
to a section, the navigation bar stayed the same except
the sub-links within the section were also displayed and
the current page had a different colored entry in the nav
bar.

What I ended up having to do was to duplicate the bar
manually on each page, add the sub-links, and change the
current page link from a link to just text. What a pain!

Tom

 

[rdmcconnell]

Stay with FP 2000. It works fine, and FP2003 doesn't
work with database retrieval / update. Microsoft won't
fix it either. (They say change to .NET !)

 

[Tom]

Thank you, thank you, thank you

It looks like it will be FP 2003.

JDR, would you take a quick look at the reply I got from
RDMCCONNELL in the original thread. He seems to have an
opinion against FP2003. I'm certainly not an expert on
all the capabilities of web pages, but I'm hoping that
he's not talking about local (within my web area)
database work. One of the next functions I want to add
to my business' web page will require rudimentary
database info. Is he talking about B2B?

Thanks again for your advice. I will be soooo glad to
have a more efficient navigation capability.

Tom

 

[Tom]

Interesting comment. I'm not very sophisticated at web
development. I did a quick look at what .NET is and it
looks like B2B. When you say it "doesn't work with
database retrieval/update" are you talking about a local
(within the scope of my web space) or bounding to other
businesses databases?

Thanks

Tom

 

[John Jansen \(MSFT\)]

Hi Tom,

What he means is that in FrontPage 2003 the Database Wizards offer you a
choice of generating pages for use against the .NET framework or pages that
use older ASP technology.

We made some changes to FrontPage 2003 that may cause custom SQL statements
and update statements to fail. The offered work-around was to use the .NET
choice in the wizard instead of the ASP choice in the wizard.

I understand your confusion on this, but it has nothing to do with B2B, that
just happens to be a common use and example for asp.net development.

 

[Tom]

Thanks, John

I'm pretty much a "low end" user of FP. At present I
don't even use any databasing on my sites. The question
I have is, for simply puting a database, like Access, on
my site and using it for some basic transactions, will
FP2003 and this change make a difference to me.

Also, is there a primer on .NET (sort of the .NET for
Dummies) that can help me get oriented.

Tom