Microsoft FrontPage 2002 [OLD VERSION]

WRONG! If you are a beginner, and don't care that your site will look like every other FP site, as long as it has lots of cute (and far too large) graphics and "professional" effects, then go ahead.

If you are a professional, who wants your site to reflect the design you have in mind, then ponder these consistent "features":

Try to size a table the way you want, and FP will resize it endlessly, forcing specific cell heights and widths when you don't want them (tip: keep at it, repeating what you want, and finally FP will do what you want).

You want to use the "table of contents" feature, that will automatically update when you add new content. Fine, it does that, but try to get the display font to be anything other than "Trebuchet MS" 12-point (which is enormous), and you are in for heartbreak.

You have a multi-level site, and want to use the "shared borders" feature: fine, it works, but if you want to use slightly-different navigation schemes for some of the levels, you are out of luck. (Another tip: create a new template for each navigation level. Stick a 100% three-row table in each template, with level-specific navigation bars in the top and bottom rows.)

You insert a graphic, then realize that it needs editing. Do not use the FP editing tools, use an outside program (like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro). All very well, but FP caches images, so even if you delete the imported image, import it again, and re-insert it into the page, you will not get the updated image. The only way to get FP to actually display the edited image is to either rename it or completely quit FP and restart it. That particular "feature" was present in FP '97. Bill Gates made his first hundred billion by selling defective software, then selling endless "upgrades" to people who thought the bugs would be dealt with. Smart guy.

You want to publish a changed version of the site. Good and well, but FP (without telling you) will take into consideration the files at the publishing destination, and will use them (of course without telling you). The only way to get an accurate upload is to first delete EVERYTHING in the destination directories.

If you want FP to upload directly to an "FP extensions enabled" server, and you are in for a crap shoot. It may work, it may not. I've given up, and publish to local directories, then use WS-FTP to actually upload the site.

Do I seem like I'm ranting? Good -- I got the message across.

Needless to say, I've done some "stepping" up since then. I've tried all the greats: Web Weaver, Dreamweaver, and finally FrontPage. I can honestly say that FrontPage is my favorite. Not only does it offer stellar web design, it also allows you to update the changes you've made to the website to the server in one click...and it does it all for you. No more fiddeling with FTP clients and getting them to agree with your HTML application AND web server. FrontPage will do all that for you after entering little information.

Even though I'll bet someone with little or even no HTML knowledge could design a good looking website, I'd strongly recommend that those people not spoil themselves and take the time to educate themselves the the language of HTML.

More serious, for some users, may be incompatibility with other authoring programs. If you just wanted Word or Excel to write docs/spreadsheets and print them at home, great. But if you'd like your web files to be portable to other programs, this one isn't so good - lost of unnecessary code and other incompatibilities. I recommend DreamWeaver for most people; if you stay in this game, you'll eventually wind up there anyway. Start with a better program, save time and money in the not-too-long run, and ensure that your files can be ported to another program and platform.