|
From:Microsoft , Microsoft Software ,
|
![Microsoft FrontPage 2003 [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/411JQZMTRRL._SL160_.jpg)
See Product Page
|
User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#1206 |
| | Page: << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >> |
65 of 72 customers found the following review helpful:
 What a waste of money, 2005-07-05
I bought this pile of garbage and am as mad as hell about it. I bought it to build a web site to publish my photographs in a gallery. I went to all the expense of buying it, spent days and days building the site (which is not as intuitive as you might hope) to finally get a site which looked pretty good from my PC. I published it on the web and then discovered IT DOESN'T DAMN WELL WORK WITH ANY BROWSER OTHER THAN INTERNET EXPLORER. Exchanged phone calls and emails with Microsoft guys in India and the final word - yep, the gallery function doesn't work with other browsers and there is nothing you can do.
I really feel ripped off.
77 of 77 customers found the following review helpful:
 Getting better, still not there yet, 2005-05-25
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.
9 of 13 customers found the following review helpful:
Good for beginners: http://www.bahamasissues.com/archive, 2005-05-08
I started out with this program and it was a ball. I think that it's very good for beginners and webmasters who want to make some quick editing right from the browser.
Delroy Meadows
http://www.bahamasissues.com/history
24 of 26 customers found the following review helpful:
A major leap from Frontpage 2002, 2005-05-03
Frontpage 2003 is a major improvement from 2002 in that Microsoft finally assimilated elements that have been common in web development for some time - that is, they finally assimilated them correctly. For example, putting Flash into your Frontpage web is alot easier now in 2003 and it will play correctly in Netscape with no code alterations (I was still making code alterations in FP 2002 with the help of Dreamweaver). There are options for making interactive buttons right in Frontpage. They also incorporated other features that used to be found only in Dreaweaver, like split views between code/design and optimizing html.
I've used both Dreamweaver and Frontpage, (I use mostly Frontpage now) and while they each have their own strengths and weaknesses, I feel I should state the obvious, in case coders (no offense) overstate the case for Dreamweaver. I buy software to build websites because I'm not good at code and also because I do not want to code. I understand learning some code is helpful, and I have learned what I can. A while back, I had migrated a whole web from Frontpage into Dreamweaver. It had form elements I had done within Frontpage and Frontpage made it easy to process the results of the form and send it to an email address. In short, I went thru the whole migration process into Dreamweaver, only to hear others tell me when I finally got around to my forms page, "Oh,... you have to supply your own ASP or CGI script". Simply put, that is not why I buy software. There are extensions you can buy for this in Dreamweaver, but I was as confused trying to find the right one to purchase as I was with the thought of doing an ASP script.
To be fair, Frontpage has its limitations in areas where Dreamweaver does not. Doing a simple rollover with javascript in Fronptage (ie, like the Dreamweaver interface of simply entering 1st image url, then the over image to generate javascript) requires purchasing the Jbots Add-in. It's definitely worth purchasing, if you can afford it.
I also like Frontpage's editing of my web in real time. Especially with a cable connection, it's a real time saver.
36 of 37 customers found the following review helpful:
 Big bucks for something you may not need., 2005-03-22
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.
|
| Page: << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >> |
|