• Professional design, authoring, data, and publishing tools to create sophisticated Web sites

• New layout and graphics tools make it easier to design exactly the site you want

• Design tools to generate better code, or expand your code skills

• With professional coding tools, write code faster, more efficiently, and with greater accuracy

• Enhanced publishing features and options help get your Web pages online more quickly

Having said that, FrontPage 2003 is a great step in the right direction. Here are my feelings, broken down:

Site Management
Site Management has improved in FrontPage 2003, although the most bang for the buck will be Enterprise users who have decided to use SharePoint Portal Server in their organization. Much of the new data functionality relies on SharePoint. What this means is FrontPage 2003 gives a lot more power for those in the Microsoft world. Note that it is still backwards compatible with frontPage 2002 extensions, for those without SharePoint.

Behaviors
Much of the work in this area is like Dreamweaver and it is a mixed bag. On the positive side, behaviors are more flexible in FrontPage; on the negative, there are still many missing from FrontPage. The major behaviors are there, however, so I would give FrontPage a plus here.

Intellisense and coding
Microsoft has always lead the charge in this area and FrontPage is no exception. The Intellisense in FrontPage 2003 extends into ASP and ASP.NET code. For developers interested in altering the code created, everything is accessible. The death of FrontPage extensions are the reason, so those with backward compatible sites will have to deprecate some features if they use webbots. The small price is well worth the gain.

CSS
FrontPage has much greater support for CSS than previous versions, and is especially useful for those who like to work with graphical tools or those who like to work with code. The tag explorer, in Dreamweaver, wins for those who sit in the middle, however.

HTML Editing
The ability to go back and forth from code to design and retain positioning is a real godsend. This feature exists in Dreamweaver, as well, so it is not as stellar as some of the other tools. One of the nicest tools is the tag explorer, that allows you to see the nesting of your currently selected tag and easily navigate up and down the tree. In addition, there is a code editor that lets you isolate on a specific tag and use Intellisense to code its attributes. There is also a tool that allows you to quickly find a closing tag, which is a godsend for any developer working with nested HTML tables.

Themes and templates
Themes are much more easily edited in FrontPage 2003, which allows designers to alter templated sites to make nice looking custom built sites very quickly. FrontPage also has the ability to create "master page" style templates which are, possibly a surprise, fully compatible with Dreamweaver MX.

That pretty much covers the major features. Overall, I like the FrontPage methodology of using a side pane that focuses on the task at hand over Dreamweavers sliding tool palette, although I know people that are more fond of the Dreamweaver IDE.

One of the biggest benefits I have seen of FrontPage 2003, in the FrontPage/Dreamweaver battle, is Dreamweaver's tendency to lock up the OS when working on files on a shoddy network connection. As this does not apply to as many users, it is not reason enough to shy away from Dreamweaver. As I use both, I do not want to shy away from either, but here is how I would stack it up.

FrontPage wins with its table designer, Intellisense, coding aids (esp. ASP.NET) and flexibility in behaviors. Dreamweaver still wins with the number of eye candy features, strength of its added CSS tools and its flexibility in coding models (nice for developers who work in more than one language - Java, ColdFusion, ASP and ASP.NET included).

284 of 288 found the following review helpful:


Excellent Website Design Product  Oct 02, 2003 By Robert D. Shull "shullrd"
Microsoft Office FrontPage is Microsoft's website design package. FrontPage allows you to easily create websites using basic or advanced web technologies.

One of FrontPage's major advantages is that it is part of the Microsoft Office family. FrontPage's uses the same interface as other Microsoft Office products. If you are familiar with Office, navigating around FrontPage is no problem.

FrontPage 2003 creates fairly clean HTML code. It allows the user to easily use advanced technologies such as ASP.NET in their websites. Beginners are able to be more productive in FrontPage than most other website design packages.

If you use some of FrontPage's features, your hosting company will need to have FrontPage extensions installed on their server. If they do not have FrontPage extensions, features such as the counter will not work.

Another drawback is that FrontPage does not support PHP natively. PHP is frequently used to create more interactive websites. A plug-in was available for previous versions of FrontPage, but I am unaware of any plug-ins for this version.

Overall if you are looking for an easy to use package, and have access to the FrontPage extensions on your host, this is an excellent package for you. If you are looking for a more professional package supporting all of the major technologies, Macromedia DreamWeaver MX is a much better option.

79 of 79 found the following review helpful:


Getting better, still not there yet  May 25, 2005 By Glynn Brooks
I've been tempted by each new version of FrontPage because it makes many tedious and complex Web site development tasks very easy to do. All that power to crank out high quality, high function Web sites has lured me to try again and again.

For example, FrontPage generates very attractive Web pages. It comes with a large set of esthetically pleasing style templates, artwork, and fonts. It also has an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor that allows you to precisely place text and graphic items on the Web page. If you change your mind, it is easy to switch templates and experiment. The FrontPage 2003 page editor is better than ever, and supports all kinds of drag-and-drop items that greatly simplify creating and using Web forms and updating databases.

But FrontPage is not focused on creating individual Web pages; its purpose is to help you build and run Web sites. For simple Web sites, that is good news. It means that someone without much training can quickly design, develop, and publish an attractive Web site. FrontPage 2003 provides many ready-made solutions; you just pick the one closest to your needs, customize it to look the way you want, and plant your flag on the Internet.

Although the template and wizard approach can get you up and running quickly, the FrontPage developers I've talked with say that the more complex a Web site is, the harder it is to use templates. Unfortunately, the templates are not customizable and do not scale well. My own experience is that templates make for a great demo, but are not usable for many Web applications.

So if you are going to have to get down and dirty to use FrontPage for non-trivial Web projects, just how good is FrontPage as a Web site programming tool? My conclusion: FrontPage does not want to be a tool; it wants to be the solution. That is the source of my continuing frustration with FrontPage, and it's why I've tried and quit using previous versions. To use FrontPage effectively, you must understand and agree to use the framework of the Web site it generates. If that framework is a good fit for the Web site you want to build, FrontPage is the right product for the job at hand. Just remember that FrontPage is not a tool, it is an architecture and a methodology.

In fairness, I must say that FrontPage 2003 is more flexible, adaptable, and powerful than any previous version. The Microsoft online support is better, and there are some very good free online tutorials. Provided that you have a high-speed Internet connection, you should be quite pleased with all the extra FrontPage documentation and goodies available from the support site.

I found one quirk in FrontPage 2003 that caught me by surprise. Microsoft classifies FrontPage as a member of the Office product family, so to download FrontPage security patches and program fixes, you have to go to the office.microsoft.com Web site and use the Office update wizard. The quirk is this: if there are any problems with the way Word or Excel are installed on your PC, it can block you from getting FrontPage patches.

On the PC where I was trying to get FrontPage updates, I had upgraded successively from Office 97 to Office 2000 to Office 2002. The Office update wizard kept prompting me to load the original CDs for the old versions. I found this very annoying, especially since I was not interested in getting updates for the other programs in the Office suite. In my opinion, there should be a way to get FrontPage updates without going through the Office update wizard.

Recommendation:

* If you are going to use FrontPage 2003, buy this book: Microsoft FrontPage 2003 Inside Out by Jim Buyens, ISBN 0735615101, 1264 pages with a supplemental CD. It has excellent chapters on how FrontPage really works, best development practices, lots of good tips and techniques, and it will help you avoid common problems.

Conclusions:

* FrontPage provides great leverage for rapid development of an attractive and robust Web site when the complexity of the Web application is low.

* If you want to develop a complex Web site, you have to spend time learning how FrontPage Web sites operate. You will probably need to get a book or two to help in your mastery of the subject.

* You may discover that the architecture of FrontPage-developed Web site is not a good fit for the site you want to build. I found this to be true for Web sites that do a lot of interaction with a database, especially when database changes may need to be rolled back and conditional screen logic was used.

42 of 43 found the following review helpful:


Big bucks for something you may not need.  Mar 22, 2005 By Scott Knudsen
This program is pretty pricey for what you get. I wouldn't have felt too bad about the price, except I found out after buying it that it no longer comes with an instruction book. There are lots of good books on amazon on how to use Frontpage, as long as you don't mind forking over another $50.oo. At least this program isn't as expensive as Dreamweaver, but then again, Dreamweaver is not going to be used for the same reasons that Frontpage is used for.

It took me two weeks to get comfortable using Frontpage 2003. And I spent most of the time figuring out that allot of the options it offers to make things easier, just don't work, or only work when you are using certain servers or certain browsers. Before buying you should go to, mww.interlacken.com/winnt/tips/tipshow.aspx?tip=29 and learn in 2 minutes what took me two weeks to learn the hard way.

Not only is using lots of fancy crap, such as java, flash, etc. annoying to most people, lots of browsers are not even set up to run all this unnecessary glut. So either you have to give your customers a plain HTML page to go to, or loose sales. Check out two of the most popular web sites on the internet, amazon and ebay. They keep it very simple and it is not because the cannot afford to hire anyone to add a bunch of fancy buttons and flash.

The reason I am saying this stuff is that you can get some really cheap or even free web page design software, if you are not going to be adding a bunch of fancy stuff.

If you do get this program and do learn to use it, it can make your life allot easier if used properly. Do a search on google for frontpage vs. dreamweaver to learn what lots of other people say.

27 of 27 found the following review helpful:


Great update from the 2000 version!  Feb 11, 2005 By Chino Racino "Someone You Can Trust"
Here is a list of my favorite improvements in 2003...

1)Previous versions of Frontpage had a lot of annoying bugs. Some people did not even realize that their troubles with Frontpage was not their fault but were actually bugs in the software. This new version fixed the annoying bugs of previous versions.

2)Another huge improvement is the tabbed interface. The tabs are similar to the FireFox browser. They make it easy to go from one file to another quickly.

3)The split screen option. You can view the html and graphical web page at the same time. This is nice if you like to edit the html by hand once in a while.

4)Web page file/folder navigation. You can easily navigate through all of your files and make quick edits in 2003.

I could not give this program 5 stars because there are still a few minor bugs/issues/defects whatever you want to call them. They are so minor though that most Frontpage users will not notice them. Overall though this is a great program for a newbie to a guru.

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