Hi! Quick questions: 1. Is Frontpage any good (never used it myself)? 2. Does Apache support Frontpage/FP Extensions etc.? Personally I would use HTML/Dreamweaver/Flash etc but I have a relative who wants to put up a web site and was recommended FP by a Linux user in the USA (?). Thanks for your advice. Paul
On Thursday 07 February 2002 6:44 pm, Paul Munro wrote:
Hi!
Quick questions:
1. Is Frontpage any good (never used it myself)?
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Sorry about that). When I first started looking at developing Ringways' web site, having never done anything HTMLy before I looked at Frontpage. I liked it. I liked how easy it was to move around, how good it was at keeping a list of links between various pages and how it warned of broken links, and how easy it was to write web pages without knowing HTML. There were a few things it coundn't do, but it let you swap into HTML mode to do this yourself. As I progressed I found that there were other things that you couldn't do so I found workarounds. Then I found that some of the extensions wouldn't work even in the development suite/Personal Web server setup that it configured on installation. Then it went tits-up, totally corrupted the site, and I lost everything. Luckily, it has an import facility, so I simply imported the published version from our server and then re-applied the last set of edits. When this happened another twice, and on the last attempt refused to import, I dumped it and decided to do it all by hand - having learned a bit more HTML by this time. At this point two things happened. 1) I never looked back, development was just as quick, and a lot more reliable. Problems that I had lived with slowly disappeared. 2) I realised how crap Frontpage actually is at writing HTML. I ended up rewriting much of it by hand. Simple things like turning off tags in the correct sequence were too much for it. Anyone who's ever converted a MS Word doc to html will know exactly what I mean.
2. Does Apache support Frontpage/FP Extensions etc.?
I believe that there are modules for Apache to handle Frontpage extensions, as well as ASP and other standard/non-standard extensions. Personally I wouldn't touch most of them with a barge-pole.
Personally I would use HTML/Dreamweaver/Flash etc but I have a relative who wants to put up a web site and was recommended FP by a Linux user in the USA (?).
Horses for Courses. If the web site that they want to develop is small/simple and needs developing by someone who isn't slightly technical then FrontPage will do the job nicely. Anything more than that and I would suggest saving a lot of heartache and buy a good HTML book.
Thanks for your advice.
Paul
-- Gary Stainburn This email does not contain private or confidential material as it may be snooped on by interested government parties for unknown and undisclosed purposes - Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000
All, I too am not impressed with FP, another fairly easy to use via the GUI and to alter via HTML is Claris Homepage (and it not a M$ product)I have found it useful for quick generation and for changes. Considering that magazines quite often throw this in as a freebie it is worth looking at. Regards to all :-) any truth in the rumour that president TB will have to do a "repatriaition test" as he is out of the country so much :-) Ian Birdsey Blackboard Associates Ltd. 87 Violet Avenue, Hillingdon, Middlesex. UB8 3PS. Tel: 0870 770 2714 Fax:01895 444216 www.blackboard-associates.com -----Original Message----- From: Gary Stainburn [mailto:gary.stainburn@ringways.co.uk] Sent: 08 February 2002 09:09 To: Paul Munro; suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Frontpage? On Thursday 07 February 2002 6:44 pm, Paul Munro wrote:
Hi!
Quick questions:
1. Is Frontpage any good (never used it myself)?
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Sorry about that). When I first started looking at developing Ringways' web site, having never done anything HTMLy before I looked at Frontpage. I liked it. I liked how easy it was to move around, how good it was at keeping a list of links between various pages and how it warned of broken links, and how easy it was to write web pages without knowing HTML. There were a few things it coundn't do, but it let you swap into HTML mode to do this yourself. As I progressed I found that there were other things that you couldn't do so I found workarounds. Then I found that some of the extensions wouldn't work even in the development suite/Personal Web server setup that it configured on installation. Then it went tits-up, totally corrupted the site, and I lost everything. Luckily, it has an import facility, so I simply imported the published version from our server and then re-applied the last set of edits. When this happened another twice, and on the last attempt refused to import, I dumped it and decided to do it all by hand - having learned a bit more HTML by this time. At this point two things happened. 1) I never looked back, development was just as quick, and a lot more reliable. Problems that I had lived with slowly disappeared. 2) I realised how crap Frontpage actually is at writing HTML. I ended up rewriting much of it by hand. Simple things like turning off tags in the correct sequence were too much for it. Anyone who's ever converted a MS Word doc to html will know exactly what I mean.
2. Does Apache support Frontpage/FP Extensions etc.?
I believe that there are modules for Apache to handle Frontpage extensions, as well as ASP and other standard/non-standard extensions. Personally I wouldn't touch most of them with a barge-pole.
Personally I would use HTML/Dreamweaver/Flash etc but I have a relative
who
wants to put up a web site and was recommended FP by a Linux user in the USA (?).
Horses for Courses. If the web site that they want to develop is small/simple and needs developing by someone who isn't slightly technical then FrontPage will do the job nicely. Anything more than that and I would suggest saving a lot of heartache and buy a good HTML book.
Thanks for your advice.
Paul
-- Gary Stainburn This email does not contain private or confidential material as it may be snooped on by interested government parties for unknown and undisclosed purposes - Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com
At 09:09 08/02/02 +0000, Gary Stainburn wrote:
1. Is Frontpage any good (never used it myself)? <snip> Horses for Courses. If the web site that they want to develop is small/simple and needs developing by someone who isn't slightly technical
On Thursday 07 February 2002 6:44 pm, Paul Munro wrote: then FrontPage will do the job nicely. Anything more than that and I would suggest saving a lot of heartache and buy a good HTML book.
I've never used FP myself - my experience is as an OU tutor who had to mark foundation-course (T171) assignments formatted as Web documents (in touch with hundreds of other such tutors). The combined feedback was that although FP was a particular problem, any so-called WYSIWYG tool was unreliable in the hands of novices. FP particularly introduced browser-dependencies, but they all tended to make pages screen resolution dependent. Graphics at absolute coordinates, which thus obscured the text on other size screens was not uncommon. I could only mark one submission by opening the file in a text editor and reading the code! It seemed that the site being simple wasn't sufficient, the approach to its design also had deliberately to be kept simple as well. Paul Munro said:
Personally I would use HTML/Dreamweaver/Flash etc but I have a relative who wants to put up a web site and was recommended FP by a Linux user in the USA
Without knowing what your relative wants to achieve with her/his site, Paul, I'd find it impossible to make _any_ worthwhile recommendation... Good networking, Roger Beaumont
participants (4)
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Gary Stainburn
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Ian Birdsey
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Paul Munro
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Roger Beaumont