Is Frontpage compatible with browsers other than microsoft?

[Jim]

I am teaching myself how to use frontpage to redesign my company's web site.
When I post the new site, it reads fine when using microsoft explorer, but it
becomes distorted with other browsers (pictures are moved/missing, text is
misaligned, etc). Is this program compatible with all browsers? Also, can I
limit the page size? Some pages require horizontal scrolling after I
published it.

Any help will be greatly appreciated as the only assistance I have now is
"Web Design for Dummies."

 

[.._..]

Not the right question to ask.

Can it make web pages for all browsers? Yes.

Does it do that naturally without you knowing what you are doing? No. (No
software does.) As a beginner, you just need to start using several
different browsers and test your work in each. After a while you will get
to know what works and what doesnt and can stop checking so much. (Still
will need review.)

Page size limiting is a function of the display area on the user's screen,
and tables or other layout confining the width.

 

[Corey Bryant]

You probably should be consider Expression Web.

FP - depending on the version, will create some bloated code. And if you
are using layers to design a website you might want to rethink this so that
you can develop a website.

I have even seen some code now created with some versions of FP will not
show up in IE 7 since IE 7 renders code differently

 

[Andrew Murray]

It's true that FP's code seems to lean in favour of Internet Explorer; but
to get real compatibility with all browsers, you'll probably have to learn
a little more about HTML, CSS etc than just what Frontpage generates and do
some hand-coding/tweaking to get it to display correctly in browsers like
Firefox, Opera, Netscape, etc. Mainly the incompatibilities are to do with
the compliance with W3C standards of other browsers, where FP code complies
more with IE which handles "MS" features like ActiveX better than other
browsers.

I assume "Web Design for Dummies" teaches the basics of HTML - rather than
Frontpage specifically as there's another title in the "for Dummies" series
called "Frontpage 2003 for Dummies" (along with for Dummies books on other
versions of FP).

However, Expression Web Designer (the successor to Frontpage) is much more
compliant with standards across browsers, cleaner code and alot more
emphasis on style sheets. You can download a trial of the Expression
software at microsoft.com and it is available for purchase through your
usual outlets, I expect.

The good thing is you can use FP and Expression together, to build your site
and get the best out of both products.

The issue with the page being wider than the screen, is you probably are
using tables for layout, so you need to make the width of the tables less
than the screen resolution that your company uses (assuming that they have
some sort of SOE (Standard Operating E Environment) where all PC's are
configured the same - including running the same O/S and same software
(including web browsers).

eg: screen res of 800 x 600 so you need to make your tables say 760pix wide
(accounting for screen area taken up by such things as the Windows task bar,
and the browser's scroll bars and toolbars/menus. That leves a lot less
screen space than the full 800x600.
if using a resolution of 1024 then make the table width 950 or similar.

You could also set the widths as percents so that the tables adjust their
size according tothe users's browser window size (you shouldn't assume
everyone uses the browser maximised).

 

[Bill O]

May I suggest the book, "FrontPage 2003 Inside Out" by Jim Buyens? This is
an excellent resource for using FrontPage 2003. I bought it when I bought my
copy of FrontPage 2003. I was totally new to this software, and barely knew
anything about web page design, having depended on MS Word 2000 and Angelfire
for my Web designing efforts. This book is a must, in my opinion. It comes
with a companion CD with all kinds of extra goodies in it.