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FrontPage to kill Dreameaver?!?!
Check out the preview image of FrontPage 2003 posted on Microsoft's web site. It looks a lot like DMX, even down to calling DIV's 'layers'. And notice that they have a DMX template file open in their screenshot!
Find the overview page here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/frontpage/overview.asp
Find the screen shot here: http://www.microsoft.com/Office/Preview/images/frontpage/frontpage.gif
Oh yeah, and what's up with that Z-index of 268436456. That div must be in the stratosphere; nothing will get on top of that!
![](downloads/images/Bruce small.jpg)
Hate to tell you but I doubt it needs a "Clean Up Word HTML" function. FrontPage 2002 already has a smart tag that if you use it will prevent all the Word format garbage from getting into your page in the first place. When you paste the content from Word and choose 'match destination styles' it will take on whatever you have in your stylesheet instead of the mso:normal crap.
I've got the beta of FrontPage 2003 installed but don't have the rest of the Office 2003 Suite so I don't know how it handles the 'new' Word code. I haven't had the time to 'play' with the beta yet. Starting with FP 2003 there are no more server extensions required it writes either asp or asp.net depending on what the server supports.
I've been known to copy Word docs into FrontPage use the smart tag referenced above to remove the Word code then copy from FrontPage HTML view over to Dreamweaver's code view. That keeps lists and other items formated but without Word markup using the current version of FrontPage 2002.
Whether FrontPage 2003 will ive up to the advanced publicity I can't say but like every other web development tool out there it will have its pluses and minuses.
I learned web site creation on the earliest versions of FrontPage. And, as late as 2001 had to work in the latest version of FrontPage because of the company I was freelancing for. I otherwise work with DreamWeaver MX and the last versions-- UltraDev, Dreamweaver 4, etc.
What just KILLED me about FrontPage is all the other damned files it creates and updates and changes and uploads and downloads to keep a website created in FrontPage glued together and functioning. What would TYPICALLY take me over an hour OR MORE to upload (yes, yes, PUBLISH) with a highspeed cable connection when first posting a site, or making major revisions, would take, literally, 10 minutes, in the Dreamweaver equivalent version.
FrontPage adds so much chaff in its template based code, and in all the auxiliary files needed to keep track of every single text file, image file, template, menubar, etc. I mean, one simple jpg seemed to generate 4 or 5 different other files that all had to be run through and changed and checked against just to overwrite or add one stupid little image. On a page with transparent gifs and buttons it was just unbearable to watch a FrontPage website churn through all the folders and sub-folders for the simplest update.
And, that is why I purposefully stayed away from all this other "data driven" jazz that FrontPage offers---those handy dandy FrontPage proprietary "extensions" usually have a much faster, more streamlined ASP, ASP.net, or regular javascript client-side application as utilized in such tools as Dreamweaver. I can only guess how much file bloat all this EXTRA functionality of the new FrontPage is adding to a website's necessary files to just conduct standard maintenance, functionality, and maintenance.
Upload and Download---that is something that I have seen FrontPage needlessly and detrimentally impact by clogging up bandwidth and bogging down site maintenance for all their "functionality".
... Macromedia is also guilty of promoting its own de-facto "standards" over true W3C and other industry standards -- or haven't you heard of Shockwave and Flash? Remember, the Flash file formats (both .FLA and .SWF) were proprietary until the (then-proposed, now official W3C) industry-standard replacement (SVG [Scalable Vector Graphics]) was announced by Adobe and the other SVG partners. Suddenly, Macromedia decided to finally publish the file format of .SWF (coincidence?). They have fought SVG tooth-and-nail ever since (Flash MX still doesn't support it, and neither does any other Macromedia product). So far, they've been successful. SVG has very little market and Web penetration compared to Flash. If you want to make SVG, you currently have to use Adobe or other non-Macromedia products, or hand-code it.
Granted, Flash did come first, and was a truly inventive (not "innovative" -- look that word up in the dictionary to see what it really mean, and you'll see why Microsoft uses it) product. However, it requires external viewer plugins or ActiveXs (so does SVG in most current browsers, but SVG is designed to be rendered by a compliant browser itself) and resides in separate external files in a non-human-readable binary format (SVG is human-readable HTML-like code inserted right in an HTML document, as additional tags that non-SVG browsers will ignore, just like other HTML extensions in the past).
I don't think the W3C has any standard that approaches the full Director-based Shockwave (unless you count Java).
I've tried all the previous versions of FrontPage. Because I've used them I don't care to waste my money on a new version that promises the same thing that the last version promised but failed to deliver. Before I would buy another copy of FrontPage they would have to do away with the FrontPage extention and pre built templates.
![](downloads/images/kent.jpg)