Microsoft FrontPage 2002 [OLD VERSION]

Took a very reasonable couple of weeks' effort making what I wanted. Two major issues were unexpected non-ease of importing formatted material from Office, and weird instability in text/graphics positioning: stuff jumps all over the place w/o warning. (I'm running WinXP Home, in case it matters.)

Then passed the saved files to a pro running DreamWeaver on Mac. He is completely unable to open many, and others all seem to have a bunch of Java in the HTML code. (Yes, I did turn off all those unneeded options first.) It doesn't seem to be possible to save as simple HTML files with common code.

It's going to cost me a great deal of time and money to repeat the whole exercise from scratch. Wish MS hadn't dropped their 30-day free trial, but I can see why.

Right for some, no doubt. But if you want compatible code, portable files, or any real idea of what's going on in there (a familiar story with MS?), run away fast.

PROS
* Preserves true HTML coding--old versions of FrontPage did not do this
* Great project management: easy to create and use templates for managing entire sites
* Great WYSIWIG editor: If you know how to use Word, you can make an entire website in FrontPage
* Direct access to web host: Don't have to ftp back and forth; if your web host supports FrontPage, you can edit pages directly in your account and see the changes immediately
* SHAREPOINT!!

The Sharepoint deserves more discussion. Sharepoint is a portal, most likely to be used as an Intranet. It has group calendars, file sharing, etc. You can create and manage your own Sharepoint portal from Frontpage. It is an amazing value for small- to medium-size companies.

SHAREPOINT ALONE IS WORTH THE PRICE OF FRONTPAGE! You cannot possibly find a portal for less money. But compare that to the cost of purchasing a comparable portal or leasing one, and this is hands-down a great value. And there is no, I repeat, NO opensource (free) groupware application that can touch Sharepoint yet. (When there is, I'll migrate.)

PURCHASING RECOMMENDATION

* People who know HTML will code without this product in a text editor
* People who want a WYSIWIG development environment should seriously consider this product, though it costs more than some decent WYSIWIG alternatives--nobody else except Dreamweaver comes close to the features FrontPage has
* If you want highly dynamic web pages (ASP, CFM, Flash, etc.), get Dreamweaver
* If you are interested in a Sharepoint portal, this is a must

I love Word and Excel. They just work. Every time. Consistently.

I am sad to say Front Page is VERY buggy. I designed a simple website with it. It is intuitive and very easy to learn. I was excited initially as to what I was making. However, in the end, I spent more time trying to solve and work around the bugs it has then I did building my entire site.

Images and boxes (for no reason) refused to stay where I put them, ending in the oddest places on the page. Identical layouts that worked fine on five of my seven pages simply wouldn't on the other two. Several times it was easier to abort a few hours of work and re-do it on a clean page then to attempt to make the existing page work.

Things that looked fine when I built it and previewed it were in different positions when the site was published.

I attempted to use frames and use several photographs as links to other pages; the pages never would open in a new window, as I indicated in the link preferences, but always in the small window of the frame.

Support is non-existent. When I exhausted the help menu that comes with the program, the program pointed me to the Internet, Front Page help site, where a search for [website] publishing troubleshooting, returned a message of no topics on the subject!

I feel that I had spent the time learning either html or Dreamweaver, or any of the other programs I would be far better off in the long run. Front Page is a great concept for the casual (hobby) designer like me, but sadly it needs a few more months in the de-bugging department before it is ready for serious use.