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Features previously in Frontpage Extentions
Features previously in Frontpage Extentions
- There were some very nice features in Frontpage that allowed me to create questions that were automatically emailed to be after a user answered them. There were other features that were nice, but needed the Frontpage extentions.
My question is how do I get that fucntionality of creating questions and having them sent to em via email. Does Expression Web have any of that functionality?
Thanks
Chaz
Toutes les réponses
- I presume that by "creating questions" you mean a form of some kind that the visitor filled out, then submitted, yes?
If so, then no, EW does not have exactly the same functionality. It does have drag and drop html form controls, but the backend processing, the part that emailed the results to you in FrontPage, was handled by the extensions (technically, I suppose, by ASP, mediated by the extensions). That part of the process is not built-in to EW, I'm afraid.
There are many other options available, a lot of which are free, and others which are commercial. The commercial options require much less from you in the way of learning new technology, but frankly, that's something you're going to have to face now anyway. Still, a commercial option my be the best bet if you are in a hurry. If not, you might want to look into one of Veign's free PHP solutions. I found them easy to implement and configure even before I had learned much about PHP.
cheers,
scott
Plural's don't have apostrophe's. It seem's sometime's that any word's ending in "s" get a gratuitous apostrophe. Apostrophe's are used to indicate possessive's and elision's (contraction's or abbreviation's).- Proposé comme réponseSiva Sivakumar dimanche 8 novembre 2009 15:34
- As long as you are hosted on a server that has the FrontPage Server Extensions installed, the same form handlers (send to email, send to file, send to database, etc.) are available in Expression Web. The form handlers work exactly the same as they did in FrontPage.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcobooks.com
Author of:
Microsoft Expression Web 3 In Depth
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web 2
The Microsoft Expression Web Developer's Guide to ASP.NET 3.5
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web
My Expression Web 3 blog on Network World:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/10560 - Chaz,
Microsoft broke new ground with its later versions of Frontpage in regards to functions that did not require coding or a very deep understanding of under the hood technicalities. Sadly, in my opinion, they have lost the concept of the "everyone" tool they created in FP and seemed to have abandoned this rather large if not largest group of users with the EW products. While the changing landscape of the web and standards are a big factor in the demise of FP there may be no good reason why a company with Microsofts resources could not have created a way forward for the many thousands of loyal FP users and created modern standards compliant legacy replacements or upgrades for the functions lost with their abandonement of the now famous server extensions we relied upon. The funny thing is many people selected the MS products because they thought there would be legacy support from a big company with resources, thats why my company selected it years ago.
EW -2 is the functional also ran attempt to challenge the dominant Dreamweaver at a lower price but it leaves us FP folks out in the cold in many regards. EW 3 seems to be a bug laden disaster for many people and those that get it to run may find many things they dont like. This forum provides many such examples.
You will not find a ready or easy answer for many of the problems you may face and I dont think Microsoft is going to give us what we want with EW until they wake up and get focused on the user community and quality control and put out a decent product that won't cost many of us hours if not days of frustration and confusion.
I will try to stay with the EW line for a while but my boss has heard enough from co-workers about EW wont do this and EW broke that and EW fixes may come out this year, or wait for EW 4 because they might get it right, that he is so mad I would not be surprised if EW is banned at our place which would be a real mind blower since they have been MS groupies forever.
You can do all the things you wanted to do but rather than one consolidated tool from MS you will have to use third party add on's. EW 3 does not permit this yet from what I read here so there is no reason to purchase it. Maybe by version 4-5-6 or whatever, they will get back on track. I wonder how many customers will be driven to Dreamweaver in the mean time. - "You can do all the things you wanted to do but rather than one consolidated tool from MS you will have to use third party add on's. EW 3 does not permit this yet from what I read here so there is no reason to purchase it."
Not true.
He can use other products to generate his form, like Coffee Cup form builder. He just can't use something that acts as a plug-in. Yet. Then he wouldn't have to worry about whether his hosting company would still load a proprietary set of software (FPSE) on every server.
Alternatively, he could learn how to create a form with the tools in EW. It's not rocket science, after all.
MS made the changes away from FP because the Web changed. IE doesn't own the browser landscape any more. MS created a way forward--it's EW, and it will generate the code that the Web needs, using standard technologies that don't break like FPSEs. And as someone who also uses Dreamweaver (less and less and less), I can assure you that it's not perfect either. - Bill,
Your point is well taken but my point is that in my opinion MS could and should have included those capabillities into the EW product and given the FP users a more streamlined and consolidated solution as evidenced by many of the post's on this forum.
While I am no pro like you and many of the others I did use FP 97 and every version up to 03 so I understand a good bit and yet I have had much difficulty. Its not that answers are not there, its that we have to invest a great deal of time and effort doing what we used to do. All the changes and standards aside, Its like GM just came out with the worlds best emisions and safety compliant car but it only comes with bench seats made of wood and you have to go elsewhere to get good ones.
So my question is why did not MS include these valuable features in the product and limit plug ins in 3 ? I just do not understand that. If third party companies can do it why wont they? I know all about the technical reasons but they can be coded around, can't they?
Bob - Exactly which valuable features are you speaking of? The OP asked about the form handler that would send email results. That features has has existed in all of the Expression Web versions.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcobooks.com
Author of:
Microsoft Expression Web 3 In Depth
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web 2
The Microsoft Expression Web Developer's Guide to ASP.NET 3.5
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web
My Expression Web 3 blog on Network World:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/10560 - Jim,
Search, sitemap, forms are a few. Are the form tools in EW limited in that they require ASP.net ? An awfull lot of people have sites on non ASP.NET servers I presume.
Jim, maybe you can tell me why MS can not provide an non server extension based Ew integrated way forward in those functions for FP folks that do not require spending hours looking for them and more hours implementing them.
By the way, I have a bookcase ready to fall over under the load of your many books. I learned how to do all those things I mentioned reading them but the Ew2 book has not been of much help in that regard.
I think I am most aggravated over the scramble to address those 3 functions while my server dumps the FP extensions. I have solved them all but now I have three vendors where I had one and I can not even go to EW3 or I have to start over with them. All those functions were part of FP. Yes- I know about the extensions and standards issues but I would still want to know why MS could or would not address them in the EW product.
Bob
- Search and Sitemap no longer exist in favor of current technologies. Search is actually best performed using a search engine unless you require document searching (inside of documents) and there are many solutions for doing that. However, that kind of work is done on the server.
Form features in Expression Web are unchanged from FrontPage. (Note my response to the OP.) In other words, you can use regular HTML page and process forms just as you always have, provided your hosting company has the FPSE installed.
Hosting companies are dropping the FPSE sure enough, but that's not Microsoft's fault. It's just a sign of the times. Web technologies evolve, and Web designers have to keep up with new skill sets. It's the nature of the beast.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcobooks.com
Author of:
Microsoft Expression Web 3 In Depth
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web 2
The Microsoft Expression Web Developer's Guide to ASP.NET 3.5
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web
My Expression Web 3 blog on Network World:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/10560 - Jim,
I think we have every book you ever wrote and in some cases multiple copies if you count at work. If you can direct me to chapters that tell me how to provide site search, site map, and non ASP.net form handling with EW not using FPSE's and without third party add ons, or if needed, ones that will work with EW-2 and EW3 I would be most gratefull. If you cant then please consider them for your next book. And if not then I think in a way my point is made in some sense.
I am off to work where I have to make a count of the number of your books in the place and I will report back tonight just for your gratification not that you need it.
Bob - I think we've wandered off the topic. The OP asked about the form handling features that were included in FrontPage. Responses he got said that they no longer exist in Expression Web, but that's not true.
What you are asking for is form handlers in Expression Web that don't use FPSE, don't use ASP.NET, and don't rely on any third-party products. Considering the fact that xWeb is a Microsoft product and you have ruled out all Microsoft technologies and all third-party products, I'm not sure what you're expecting. If you don't want to use Microsoft technologies and you don't want to use any non-Microsoft products, you've just put yourself in a box that prevents you from using anything at all!
Keep in mind that you can use PHP or ASP.NET in Expression Web, and both are great at handling forms. If you want ASP.NET examples, you'll find them in my Expression Web books and in my ASP.NET books. However, you have said that you don't want to use ASP.NET, so you'll either need to use PHP or use another server-side form handler possibly provided by your host.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcobooks.com
Author of:
Microsoft Expression Web 3 In Depth
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web 2
The Microsoft Expression Web Developer's Guide to ASP.NET 3.5
Special Edition Using Microsoft Expression Web
My Expression Web 3 blog on Network World:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/10560 Bob,
Would you mind telling me how Microsoft is supposed to impose some "standard" method for processing forms? There are a couple of different "standards" yet almost every host I have used has some twist unique to their hosting to prevent spamming from domains on their hosting. The asp.net form output from the Ctrix generator http://www.ctrfx.com/form/ which outputs MS standard forms processing and I've had to modify it to work on Windows hosting. The contact form in the MS starter kits has to be modified to work on hosts such as GoDaddy. These are forms that use the exact syntax and premissios the Microsoft recommends for Windows hosting. Yet they require modification.
I have to modify php forms on Linux hosts to do things like add relay servers or use specific server and port number on some web hosts.
Microsoft does not control web hosting and even hosts that use Windows servers often don't follow what MS reacommends.
The form processors in FrontPage requires you to bypass the built in processing using classic asp, asp.net and php by using a precompiled script on the server. It also requires you to provide the receiving email address in your html. Its a very, very dated method that does not prevent spamming and in fact macy encourage it. That's why CGI forms and web programming has gone out of fashion.
I quit using the FrontPage forms processor back in 1999 when spamming really got started.
This situtation is exactly why Dreamweaver and other programs never included any sort of auto generated forms processing.
The real issue is when is MS going to get its act together on third party add-ins and extensibility.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes- I am the Origianl poster, and I just want to thank you for the replies. I probably didn't make myself clear enough, but I do think I got an answer. My question/request was basically this:
1. I don't write or know code
2. I need to EASILY setup forms and reply to emails
3. Frontpage did that for me very easily
4. ------> The real question------> How can I do this in EW
It looks like the answer is I can't do it because FPSE are fading out, the web has changed, and Microsoft opted for a more standards complient solution with EW. Thats fine. I still need what I need, so what I may have to do is install Frontpage after all these years and just use it for the things I need it for.
I will also look at some of the free and commercial solutions that were suggested, but I do agree with SurferBob, Why wouldn't MS just include that functionality for all the loyal FP folks?
Chaz - "Why wouldn't MS just include that functionality for all the loyal FP folks?"
Why doesn't Honda put cassette decks in their cars any more? I wasted all that money buying cassettes, and now Honda is making me buy CDs. Sheesh.
Why do you think EW should do absolutely everything like FP used to? Want to build forms in EW? Learn how to do it in EW, using ASP.NET (it's not rocket science). What do you want for $79?
You CAN do it in EW, you just don't want to expend the effort to learn how. Go try Coffee Cup.- ModifiéBill Pearson samedi 7 novembre 2009 16:09
The FrontPage Server Extensions thing is interesting, and I have sympathy for those who built so much web content around the extensions just to be abandoned by then. I too used the extensions in their day, but when I changed to the first version of Expression Web, I saw the writing on the wall and began redoing all my sites that required the FP extensions. Lucky for me, my main interest is in programming and not web site development. So I was able to recreate everything that FrontPage had given me in ASP.Net.
The web used to be static; now it is very dynamic. A lot of those FP webbots where not particular good. I particularly remember all the problems the Discussion Group webbot had. I like the Honda analogy above. Things change, and if you want to keep up, you are forced to go with the change. I think there is possibly a free version of Visual Basic and Visual Web Developer. In fact, I have found a link: http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/ . Give them a try and see what you can do. There are probably also forums like this one specific to those programs where you can get help.- Chaz,
You got some incorrect information in your replies. The form handling features that were available in FrontPage are still there in Expression Web. They are exactly the same. If you are hosting on a server that has the FrontPage Server Extensions installed, the functionality you get with Expression Web is EXACTLY the same as it was in FrontPage.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
www.jimcosoftware.com
www.jimcobooks.com - Jim,
Yes many host's still have the FPSE's but for how long? I was surprised that your book on EW-2 gave so much information on the forms handling but made only minor mention of the FPSE's and made no caution at all about using them going forward. Perhaps you were also not aware at the time you wrote it just how fast those extensions would die out. At this point doing anything based on the extensions seems like a very bad plan so Chaz would be likely facing this same problem in months or if lucky maybe a year or so.
Bil,
I too like your cassette example but it is not really a fair comparison in some regards. If only it were as simple as buying a cassette adapter or something like that. After all a lot of FP people do not have sites on ASP.NET capable servers so if they want to use that technology they may have the added burden of a server change. The other solutions- while all valid- require a great deal of additional effort to implement. A price of 79.00 is not the point from my perspective. I would gladly pay double or tripple that price and have had MS integrate a seamless solution into the product so that I would not be left stranded facing eminent failure of site features. In this way I feel strongly that MS made a big mistake because they could have solved this and provided a product that was a lot more FP'er freindly. No rather than that we have to spend lots of time finding solutions. The time I spent already tops 50 hours.
Sure- people can mention all the technical reasons for this or that. Sure- we can do this or that to fix one thing or another. All the technical answers and all the hodge podge work arounds are all true and valid- nobody is disputing that. The point I have been trying to make is that I am not pleased, and I gather many thousands of others are not pleased, with EW and what to do about all those FP sites.
Telling people that they need to quit griping and wake up to the new reality is valid.
Telling a person stranded on the side of the road to quit griping and hitch hike is equally valid.
Its that MS threw us off the bus in the middle of the desert with no water and tells us to stick out our thumbs that gets me mad. In my opinion they have really failed in the way they handled FP legacy and frankly from what I have seen and read the EW product is making those problems worse. EW-3 no add ins and has so many issues and bugs for many users. Pitty the poor Frontpage sap who buys EW3, even if it actually works as expected.
Sure EW is not going to replace FP. We hear it time and again- thats the whole point!
Venting again
Bob - Suferbob, I have to agree with you in some respects.
FP "automated" for the novice user the sending of form submitted data via email. It wrote the server-side code using Active Server .asp Pages, and your website had to be hosted on a server that supported Active Server Pages. And it did several other things that have mentioned often, like navigation, and some of the database wizard stuff. And like Jim says, Expression still honors some of that old way.
But there is no reason Microsoft could not have done the same things with Expression Web -- automating all the things it did with Webots, but writing the code using ASP.NET (.aspx pages) instead of .asp. In which case you would need to have a host that supported ASP.NET.
That doesnt mean that it would be any easier to transition current FP ASP sites to ASP.NET than it is, but it *would* mean that less experienced users could have accomplished more with less work/understanding than they can now, just as they could have with Frontpage.
Why Microsoft chose not to do that -- who knows. Yeah yeah all that stuff about the lousy bloated code the webbots did, well they could have re-done everything with asp.net and done it with code that wasnt lousy bloated code. But they didnt.
It would have pleased a lot of their customers.
ClarkNK, A.K.A. HomePage Doctor
HomePageDoctor.com -- Expression Web database tutorials
Ownertrades.com -- Created with FP, Access, Bots and Wizards
MyNumbersTracker.com -- Created with Expression, VWDExress, SQL Express, and ASP.NET. Jim,
Yes many host's still have the FPSE's but for how long? I was surprised that your book on EW-2 gave so much information on the forms handling but made only minor mention of the FPSE's and made no caution at all about using them going forward. Perhaps you were also not aware at the time you wrote it just how fast those extensions would die out. At this point doing anything based on the extensions seems like a very bad plan so Chaz would be likely facing this same problem in months or if lucky maybe a year or so.
Bob,
Chaz said that he was moving back to FrontPage because the features he wanted were gone in Expression Web. I accurately explained to him that the features were unchanged in Expression Web from what they were in FrontPage.
I made no caution about FPSE? Perhaps you should read page 46 where I explicitly said, ". . .there's a general tendency by Microsoft these days to shift away from a reliance on the FrontPage Server Extensions." And then, when speaking of the choice between FTP and FPSE, I said, "If given the choice between using a technology that's being phased out [FPSE] and one that has proven to be a long-lived technology [FTP], I'll choose the one with greater longevity every time."
The fact is that many hosting companies still provide the FPSE. If Chaz wants to use them for form handling, I see no reason for him not to as long as he has a host that supports that. It's perplexing to me that this thread has become so convoluted. The original question was a pretty simple one.
Jim- Clark,
The only form handler that uses ASP is the Send to Database form handler. The others don't use ASP at all and can be hosted on any Web server that uses the FrontPage Server Extensions.
Jim - Jim,
I tecnnically stand corrected about the mention of FPSE's in your book but after having checked your references and re-reading them I still feel that the caution and warnings were weak at best. And while on this thread you still point out that these functions still exist on FPSE servers but I think strong emphasis should be placed on alternatives. I would be most eager to read of any alternatives and implementations targeting the FP'ers in a future book. I would think it a topic worth a few chapters. This thread is not convoluted and the original question had a simple answer only if we forget about FPSE's. Otherwise it the issue is a very big problem for FP novices.
Clark,
It seems that many people get hung up on the technical aspects and forget what FP did as an enabling medium for novices. Steping back from the technical angle and considering that tens of thousands-perhaps hundreds of thousands of web sites exist because of this "everyperson" product is in itself revolutionary. Yes there were and are other products but it took a Microsoft to elevate it, and to a great degree the web itself, into a transformational medium. In this sense I am disapointed with a company that while on one hand trying to make operating systems and thus computing an "everyperson" experience at the same time seems to have forgotten this notion with the EW series of products to some degree. If EW is aimed at the development community as it seems to be, then in my opinion they have abandoned the most important objectives that FP tried to fullfill. It is just not fair to dismiss the matter as whinning and saying EW is not FP, everyone knows that by now. The fact remains that a void now exists because of Microsofts failure to at least some extent.
- I'm still confused over what you think should have been added to Expression Web that wasn't added. If you're talking about a non-FPSE email form handler, that's certainly something that could be added, but your previous response said that you wanted to see something that wasn't ASP.NET, wasn't Microsoft-centric, and doesn't require any 3rd party components.
If you set up a scenario that is impossible to resolve and then complain that no one has resolved it, I think your argument loses credibility.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
www.jimcosoftware.com
www.jimcobooks.com - Jim,
Form handler is a big one and as you say it can be added. Site search and site map are more. The UI and many of the bugs seem to be getting resolved.
I said I wanted these things and I wanted a Microsoft centered solution because I want it in EW. I also said I would like to have them functional without windows ASP.NET hosting so that I do not have to change servers. I presume a great many thousands of Frontpage customers would want them to as they migrate to EW.
I NEVER SAID I WANTED NON-MICROSOFT OR THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS ! You are wrong. I commented that they seem to be the answer at present, not that I want them.
I am not pretending to be a programmer or saying how to do it- I am saying this is what I want. I have asked you in the past if the above can be done but you have yet to fully answer. The question remains. Can it be done and included in EW as a single source product?
I am not setting up any scenario but I am certainly complaining MS has not provided it if in fact they can or could have.
Your own answers to the OP's question and similar ones has referenced third party solutions. I have only pointed out my opinion that if a function was in Frontpage and had widespead use that EW should provide a better migration path foreward without the kind of solutions you may have mentioned. I still think this is a valid point and I think a lot of people would agree in general.
Meanwhile thousands or tens of thousands of sites may break or at some point in the future break. Yes all those site creators can spend hundreds of hours learning and buy books and do what it takes but that is not and never was my point. Rather than argue semantics or talk about convolutions or scenarios or all the technical reasons or excuses for the nature of the EW product I will just repeat that I am not happy with the product for the above reasons and I say that as a consumer.
- Bob,
Here is the quote I'm referring to.
If you can direct me to chapters that tell me how to provide site search, site map, and non ASP.net form handling with EW not using FPSE's and without third party add ons, or if needed, ones that will work with EW-2 and EW3 I would be most gratefull. If you cant then please consider them for your next book. And if not then I think in a way my point is made in some sense.
So what you said is that you don't want ASP.NET (Microsoft's server-side solution) and you don't want FPSE or third-party add-ons that don't work in xWeb 3. (Expression Web 3 doesn't currently support add-ins.) That's the impossible scenario I'm referring to.
Point and click solutions are always going to require something running on the server. You don't want ASP.NET and you don't want FPSE. That means that you would have to use either PHP or a custom solution such as that provided by CMS systems with plug-in functionality. However, that's a third-party solution that doesn't integrate with any particular design application because it's all Web-based.
Bottom line from my perspective is that the Web has evolved away from what you are asking for. As such, Expression Web evolved with it. Many FrontPage users have complained about FPSE features going away, but from where I sit, that's just the evolution of the Web. That evolution means that Web developers have to become more technical to keep up. It's the nature of the beast.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
www.jimcosoftware.com
www.jimcobooks.com - Although I've been following this forum for a long time I haven't posted anything in months because, well, I don't enjoy banging my head against a brick wall. But there ar a couple of things I'd like to point out to some of the posters here:
SurferBob: there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are clearly correct. The bad news is it simply doesn't matter.
Jim/Bill/Cheryl/et al: of course EW creates better HTML and is more compliant with current standards and methods. And of course it makes sense for anyone who wants to maintain current technical proficiency to use products like EW. But this is not the issue that SurferBob is addressing.
The real issue is simply this: Productivity. FP allowed people with minimal expertise to create web pages with a lot of sophisticated functionality in very little time. And the simple truth is that most end users like this (especially the ones who charge by the hour for their services, or who have deadlines to meet.)
What EW did was change that. EW clearly allows creation of the same kinds of web pages, and even more, but with a significantly higher learning curve. I'm talking about weeks of learning for someone who does not have the basic understanding of code or is sufficiently detail oriented to deal with the minutiae of CSS.
Apparently MS decided, most likely in some dark smoke filled room, that the old FP approach was wrong and that the FP users were not going to contribute much to the MS bottom line. So they opted for a totally different approach that was targeted at a totally different end user community.
Of course this is clearly their choice; after all, it is their company. Frankly I have no idea why they made this choice (perhaps it was because FP was a NIH (not invented here) product.) Clearly MS could have developed future versions of FP that were better and that did not depend on the extensions (perhaps by putting up a set of their own serves that mimicked the FPSE functionality.) Or perhaps they thought that every person who makes web pages likes to code and delve into the details of CSS. Of course we will never know the real reason.
The bottom line to all this is simple. The people who liked FP for what it did will forever miss it. And the people who tout the blessings of EW (and who make money from it) will always feel sorry for the poor FP users. Its really not a technical issue at all; its a philosophical one. Birk,
The FPSE required that you host on a web server with the extensions installed. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view only a minority of hosts did so AND they tended to be more expensive.
Back in the "old" days there weren't the spammers or script kiddies who would take forms like the FPSE email bot and use them to spam others. As more of those folks came out web hosts implemented a variety of methods to combat them. That is what is responsible for forms processing issues.
There are some form/processing generators both free and pay that do work on most web hosts that support the server side processing language used. Chris (veign at http://veign.com/development-category.php?page=2&catid=42&type=web) offers some mostly plug and play forms processing scripts using PHP. Then there is the asp.net form generator also free but donations appreciated or if you want him to create/install a small fee http://www.ctrfx.com/form/ though due to different methods from hosts you may have to modify the processing code . Others may use a combination of PHP & Flash such as the Coffee Cup forms processor mentioned above.
Many of those FP functions were created not for internet websites (though people used them there) but with "information workers" for editing intranet site where total control over both the server and the browser used was available. When FP was discontinued those two functions were split with those "full featured" bits that required control over the server and browser used (many were IE only and that just isn't realistic on the web) are in SharePoint Designer. It too will write standards complaint code but still is aimed predominately at IE.
Hosted solutions are available now that weren't back in the mid-90s to 2003 when FP was at its peak. Now you can get those rich websites using a blogging application that handles all your forms processing, even shopping carts via plug-ins without ever writing code. All you need EW for if you are using one of those apps is to work on the presentation layer - aka your site theme. That's a much better option for most of the "I don't want to have to learn anything" folks than a full featured web editor creating sites from scratch.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes- <quote>
What EW did was change that. EW clearly allows creation of the same kinds of web pages, and even more, but with a significantly higher learning curve. I'm talking about weeks of learning for someone who does not have the basic understanding of code or is sufficiently detail oriented to deal with the minutiae of CSS.
</quote>
Not necessarily true Birk.
You can create a wysiwyg page with EW and never go to code view or view the style section.
The question is..why.
Switch to code view, learn some very basic CSS and then let the built in CSS intellisense show you the way.
You might be surprised.
Expression Web MVP Steve,
That misconception is exactly why I created the "Basic Website" video tutorial which takes someone from a Word doc and images through a site design and up to creating a DWT in approximately an hour and a half without ever requiring someone to go into code view or use anything other than the dialog boxes.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes- bbinnard,
Thank you soooo very much for grasping the essence of my argument. Yes you are also so very correct in stating it does not matter. That is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of it-that it does not matter to Microsoft. It may have been an NIH attitude or it may be a gross lack of understanding of the motives of the customers that made FP a hit. As far as sales potential goes it seems illogical to me to market to the much narrower developer base, yet in creating a product that adds new, and in some cases impossible for some, demands on the customer to use the product is limiting the potential market. In some ways it makes no business sense to narrow the potential market in such a way. I wonder if Dreamweaver envy is not the root cause, yet it would seem that the Dreamweaver die hards must be laughing their rumps off over the fiasco of a product EW3 seems to be.
Microsoft, in my opinion, has lost the meaning behind the whole concept of "everyone" with EW. Remember the line- "Where do you want to go today" - it seems to me if your a Frontpager going to EW the only place your going is nowhere fast. Rather you will likely be hanging out on forums, reading a lot of books, watching a lot of tutorials, and spending lots and lots of time just trying to get back to where you were.
I am no expert, I am no programmer, but I am a consumer. And I believe MS could have done much more and done much better. As a consumer I can say the market is ripe for some enterprising company to fill the void and come out with a "real replacement" for FP and to do what Microsoft will not do and satisfy the need in the market that does in fact exist. I do believe that creative programming can result in a better product. If Microsoft has become too big, or too dumb, or too indifferent to consumers, then the market will settle it and they will have what they seem to have wanted- a narrow market share always steps behind appealing to a limited number of developers willing to invest the time to fix or work around product shortcomings. - "As a consumer I can say the market is ripe for some enterprising company to fill the void and come out with a "real replacement" for FP"
You mean like Sea Monkey or Contribute or Go Live or Kompozer, HotMetal, PageMill, etc., etc., etc.?
Oh, wait, Adobe dumped Go Live and wants people to use DreamWeaver instead. And HotMetal and PageMill? Hmm. Where are they now? Find one and use it.
In what world does a company like Microsoft, who buys any program/service they think is interesting and they can profit from (Great Plains, Visio, FoxPro, HotMail, Groove, Link Exchange, Teleo and on and on and on) get seriously accused of having an "NIH attitude"? That is ludicrous on every level.
"Apparently MS decided, most likely in some dark smoke filled room, that the old FP approach was wrong and that the FP users were not going to contribute much to the MS bottom line."
First off--Microsoft--smoke free,. Second, FP never contributed much to the MS bottom line, and neither will EW. Do you have any idea how big MS is? How they make their money? How much money they make? FP and EW were and are inconsequential niche products in the grand scheme of things. Microsoft didn't get where they are today on the sales of $79 niche products.
Geez, get real. At least have a sense of how a huge business really runs and how real business decisions are made--not some sordid conspiracy game.
You want FP? Go download SharePoint Designer 2007. It's the new, improved, lemon-scented FP, and it's free! yet it would seem that the Dreamweaver die hards must be laughing their rumps off over the fiasco of a product EW3 seems to be.
In a word, no. You continue to make claims like this despite the fact that you have been told time and time again that you are flatly incorrect. I really would prefer you not continue making these unjustified and unsupported claims. As I told you once before: you are entitled to your opinions; you are not entitled to your own facts.
Paul Bartholomew
Microsoft Expression Web- If I may make a couple of points in my own defense:
1. About the size of MS and all the money they make: yes, I am well aware of all that. But what matters is that, in any company, there are profit centers and there are cost centers. Expression is a profit center. If it wasn't it wouldn't exist. MS does not make software just to be nice to us.
2. About the script kiddies etc: agreed, but that was then and this is now. Surely those kinds of reasons are not sufficient justification for the loss of productivity between FP and EW.
3. About code view, PHP, ASP, CSS, and all those other fancy do-dads: of course there is lots of functionality there. But it all has a price...and a learning cuve (which is where the real price is.) FP shielded users from all of that. And people liked that kind of protection.
4. About goLive, Dreamweaver, SeaMonkey, Namo Web Editor, etc.: none of those have the full-featured capability of a product like FP or EW. Face it, only MS has the ability to put out a truly full-function web development product. With EW they simply decided to change their target audience. So I use EW2. But I wish it worked like FP did. 3. About code view, PHP, ASP, CSS, and all those other fancy do-dads: of course there is lots of functionality there. But it all has a price...and a learning cuve (which is where the real price is.) FP shielded users from all of that. And people liked that kind of protection.
They may have, but that's what got us where we are now, and I would argue that it's not a good place to be. There are quite a number of "Web designers" who don't even know what CSS is. In order to design a modern-day Web site, you absolutely *must* have that knowledge.
Yes, FrontPage shielded you from knowing anything. The question you need to ask is whether or not it was doing you a favor by doing so. In the end, you'll end up being much more competent in your craft by using Expression Web and actually learning a thing or two.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
www.jimcosoftware.com
www.jimcobooks.com- Paul,
Read my comments again- I state they are MY OPINIONS often. As far as other "facts" go let the chips fall where they may. One fact I am very sure of is that as a Frontpage user converting to EW I was less than happy with FP legacy support in the EW product. I stand by that. I hope you are not going to tell me that MS could not have done a better job in that regard because I cant believe that. It looks like I will spend hundreds of hours rebuilding Frontpage websites because of it.
At a minimum the EW product should apply repairs to FP sites where it is possible and provide a streamlined way of doing so by removing and replacing depricated code or applying alternatives to bloated code and MS proprietary code that is no longer valid. In addition, EW should provide a migration path for features such as search, sitemap, and forms in some way.
Why cant those things be done? If a Frontpage user was able to create things with a few clicks and the canned code was inserted then a mechanism already exists to identify that canned code. Why cant it be fixed by replacing it with compliant code? Yes I recognize EW has many tools to do this but why cant the final step be made to implement them for Frontpage users. Do we really have to expect these thousands of people to become developer jocks?
Look at the kind of sites of many of the Frontpage people comming to this forum looking for help. They are art studios or golf clubs or real estate firms or hobbyists. They dont want to learn these things and I dont blame them. Its your Company as bbinnard says, so if you dont want to support your past FP customers better then thats your decision. I have only said my opinion as a consumer and as your long time customer. Jim,
I agree with you regarding CSS. Having been dragged into it kicking and screaming I can see the advantages but I must say I am wondering why someone can not make a better more intuitive tool for page layout that works like tables did. Yes I know its apples and oranges but my thinking is make a CSS editor that acts in a logical way, or should I say more familiar way more akin to the positioning of tables. Can this be done? The table layout method is easy for anyone to get their brain around fast and has predictable results. Maybe I am describing a CSS table layout method that already exists but could use a better interface for people like me?- JIM,
One more thing. A number of people comment that Frontpage users do not know anything or do not need to know anything or words to that effect. I do not feel that is really fair. They may not know all the code or under the hood technical stuff but they must know something because there are a heck of a lot of really good looking FP sites out there. Maybe its what they want to do more than what they want to know.
Having started with the Que book "Using FrontPage 98" (over 700 pages) and Read every version of the book since up to " Using FronPage 2003" (over 950 pages) I hardly feel like a person who "Does not need to know anything".
It sure looks like a lot of ink for people who dont need to know anything.
Frontpagers dont get the respect they deserve. - Bob, you were the one who said that FrontPage shielded users from knowing anything about that. All I did was agree with you! I have never said that FrontPage users don't know anything, nor have I said that FrontPage users don't need to know anything. On the contrary, if you'll read my post again, I think you'll see that what I said is that Web designers (whether they be FrontPage users or Expression Web users) need to know these technologies in today's climate.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
www.jimcosoftware.com
www.jimcobooks.com - I hesitate to say that something can't be done, but I don't see how you'd do such a thing. If you are going to use CSS for layout (and you don't have to, by the way), you need to understand CSS well and you need to understand how certain elements render in specific browsers. You're not going to find anything that lets you drop a DIV positioned at a specific place on a page and have that position maintained in all circumstances across all browsers.
It seems to me that what you want is a Web design tool that lets you design complex, modern Web sites without having any knowledge of Web design technologies. I just don't see that happening for you. If you want to design your own modern Web site, you're going to have to do some work to learn how. However, if you just want to drag and drop and create a site without any knowledge of anything, my recommendation would be a service like Squarespace. There is certainly a valid position of "I just want to focus on great content and not deal with designing my own layout and site."
Finally, I think the CSS tools in Expression Web are excellent! I especially like the CSS Properties panel. If you do go the route of learning all of these concepts, you'll find extremely powerful design tools waiting for you.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
www.jimcosoftware.com
www.jimcobooks.com - Bob, as has been mentioned several times, but you seem to simply ignore it, SharePoint Designer 2007 still supports the FP bots and features that you miss, and has an interface very similar to EW's, modeled on EW1, IIRC. It's free for the download, so if you simply can't do without those features, go get it. It will require you to continue to use providers which support FPSE if you use any features that require them, but that's the price, and it would be the same if EW3 supported them.
Another thing; you mentioned above "... yet it would seem that the Dreamweaver die hards must be laughing their rumps off over the fiasco of a product EW3 seems to be." All that reveals is how truly clueless you are about the actual market and the respective user communities.
As a user of both Dreamweaver CS4 and EW, I spend time on both products' forums, mailing lists, and groups, and I can tell you that (a) the average DW user is blissfully unaware of the existence of EW [there's even less mention of EW there than of DW here], and (b) like here, the community consists of a core group of people who answer questions and help others and a larger group of those who are either new and inexperienced or are having problems with their products.
And yes, that means that, just like here, there are people who complain about problems with DW, who complain because this or that feature is gone in the current version, or the interface has changed, or all of their Site Definitions just up and vanished, never to return and requiring a rebuild of all site settings. They've got their own problems, and their own issues about the direction Adobe has taken DW, and could pretty much care less about EW or its users.
Also, as someone who abandoned FP for standards compliance with version 2000, and who has used other products since, principally HomeSite, TopStyle Pro, and Dreamweaver, I would not be at all surprised to learn that Microsoft has actually increased their market share with EW. They will have gotten, or will get, the majority of the FrontPage users if and when they decide to update, and they will lure back a large body of professional developers who wouldn't touch FP with the proverbial ten-foot pole. They have created a truly professional-level development tool, which in only three versions is already rivaling the market leader in functionality. That, like the market leader, one must have a glimmering of understanding of the technologies of the Web to use the tool effectively is the price that must be paid.
Here's the situation, Bob. If EW is too much trouble for you, and you would rather use FP's convenience features, then by all means either continue to use FP, or download, install, and use SharePoint designer. FP is gone, finished, replaced. The Web is changed, irrevocably. One of the hottest frameworks going these days is jQuery. However, using jQuery accessors effectively requires a thorough understanding of HTML and CSS. The modern Web, and modern user expectations (remember them?), require a degree of sophistication and access to advanced tooling that is simply not possible with a tool like FrontPage. Get over it. Nothing you say or do will change the situation, you've voiced your displeasure over and over, and it's beginning to sound a lot like whining. Time to move on.
cheers,
scott
Plural's don't have apostrophe's. It seem's sometime's that any word's ending in "s" get a gratuitous apostrophe. Apostrophe's are used to indicate possessive's and elision's (contraction's or abbreviation's). Bob, bbinard:
In all this grousing, you still haven't acknowledged that MS does in fact offer the solution you think people need--SharePoint Designer 2007. And it's free as of last year. It's just not called FrontPage. Is that all you want--a name change?
Have you even looked at SharePoint Designer 2007?
Jeez.
With all the free WYSIWYG website programs out there (even those included free in most hosting packages) that produce passable sites, why would anyone ("...art studios or golf clubs or real estate firms or hobbyists.") think that MS needs to address that market? The hosting company we use (1&1) offers a WYSIWYG website builder, forms builder, guestbook, forum, survey, photo gallery, blog, e-shop, etc., free with every package. Piece of cake. So it's not all in one piece of software. Big deal. Can people really not cope with that?
Maybe you'd rather just complain endlessly, even in the face of alternative solutions.Read my comments again- I state they are MY OPINIONS often.
Uh-huh... so writing stuff like:
"yet it would seem that the Dreamweaver die hards must be laughing their rumps off over the fiasco of a product EW3 seems to be"
and
"So total fail is running better than 10% in my case and unhappy is another 20% or so. Those are very bad numbers for any product."
and
"Regardless of exact cause it can be said that product credibillity is on the line for many people."
and
"The return policy of many retailers is going to get tested with this one."
and
"buggy mess"
is perfectly okay with you?
Bob, the reality is that *you*, personally, don't like the product and you don't like the direction it is going. That is your prerogative. But pretending that that dislike is universally shared is where you keep crossing the line. You've been bashing Expression Web 3 since it was first released, with overblown rhetoric like the quotes above and the quotes in this thread. Again, that's your prerogative but it's getting a bit tiresome.
Update: And that's my last word on this since this is not a productive use of my time and I've made my opinion very clear.
Paul Bartholomew
Microsoft Expression Web- Paul,
OK- I can see your point. Those comments obscure the fact that I am very much a suporter and very long time customer of Microsoft and its web development products. I can see where they are tiresome and perhaps hitting a raw nerve but that was really not my intention. Regardless an apology is in order if for no other reason than my less than tactfull way of trying to make my point. So please accept my apology and my assurance that I am in fact a supporter.
I may have been pushing too hard and expressing some disapointment in a less than productive way. My goal was not to cause distress but rather to put forward some of my opinions as a consumer of the products. You probably noticed a good bit of frustration on my part that could have been better quelled by trying to work around those issues. Suffice to say it is not a productive use of your time or mine for that matter.
In the future I will try to address issues with more fact and less comentary and conjecture.
Please do not exclude me from your future dialog. Regardless of what you may have thought I am very much into EW.
Bob - <quote>
Second, FP never contributed much to the MS bottom line, and neither will EW. Do you have any idea how big MS is? How they make their money? How much money they make? FP and EW were and are inconsequential niche products in the grand scheme of things. Microsoft didn't get where they are today on the sales of $79 niche products.
</quote>
fwiw when I became an MVP for FrontPage there were 5 million ( yep million ) registered FrontPage users.
Expression Web MVP - Steve,
Wow- thats even bigger than I ever thought it was. I said I thought Frontpage was a transformational product that was a big influence on the development of the web and 5 million reasons exist to prove it. I also think I paid a lot more than $79 if memory serves.
Microsoft did a great thing with Frontpage no matter what people say about it today.
R.I.P Frontpage old buddy. I miss you. - "I also think I paid a lot more than $79 if memory serves."
Than you either didn't buy the upgrade version, which you could have bought, or you have a poor memory, assuming you bought it in the US - or some store was ripping you off.
4. About goLive, Dreamweaver, SeaMonkey, Namo Web Editor, etc.: none of those have the full-featured capability of a product like FP or EW. Face it, only MS has the ability to put out a truly full-function web development product. With EW they simply decided to change their target audience. So I use EW2. But I wish it worked like FP did.
Thank you for a good belly laugh. GoLive attempted to do much of what FP did in GoLive 5 but ran into so many problems with different server compatability issues they gave up and started removing more and more of those "features". CoffeeCup is attempting have a full WYSIWYG editor that will work in conjuction with other applications it has for search and forms processing so you might check it out. The closet editor to FP I know of is NetObjectFusion if you want to try and find a more FrontPage like program than SharePoint Designer.
There are so many more ways to get all of the features that FP had and many, many more now without ever writing a single line of HTML or even CSS (though if you want to personalize you'll need use some CSS.) using just the various "Live" offerings you get blogs, photo galleries, rss and the ability to comment.
Use WordPress and you get blogs, pages, with plug-ins you simply upload then go to the admin panel and turn on the extension you can add ecommerce, lightboxes, photo galleries. Use Joomla, DotNetNuke or Drupal, each of which is frequently available via a "one click" deploy in hosting control panels give you all that and more without plugins.
Given the feature rich applications people now look for in many websites MS just can't do it all in something that requires little or no learning. That's why they have pushed the Live apps so strongly. Small business can even use Office Live and get feature that far exceeded even what you could do with the Workgroup/SharePoint Services in FrontPage.
That's one reason why in my book I spent much of one of the early chapters in explaining other options available besides creating a website from scratch in Expression Web and asking the person to consider whether or not they really needed/wanted to create a website in Expression Web with all the work and learning curve it entails.
MS didn't "simply decide to change their target audience". Even granted that you might be right in your view of who that target audience was (and personally I don't think that was ever more than a minor portion of the target audience of FrontPage) the expectations of that "audience" has changed to the point where a full WYSIWYG simply can't do it all.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes- Actually I never bought FrontPage as a standalone program though I probably would have bought FP 2003 that way because it was the only version that didn't come with my copy of Office [whatever] Pro/Premium.
Government, businesses with corporate licenses and university versions of Office all included FP 2003 so I expect many of those "registered" users may have never even opened FrontPage since it was registered as part of Office.
Upgrade pricing from what I recall was $99 or less if you bought the program separate from Office.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes- Proposé comme réponseCheryl D WiseMVPmercredi 11 novembre 2009 15:15
- Cheryl,
I need to look into all those things a lot deeper. I must admit I am not up to speed on "live" app's but will be busy googling them. Where can I get your Book, Is it on you site now?
We deployed FP as a stand alone on several employees machines and mostly paid for the full versions but used upgrades if a prior version existed. I seem to recall the stand alone full version being around $150. Remember that was when the license was per machine. I bet we spent thousands overall. - When I read about the "five million registered users" I was going to make the point that the vast majority of those registrants were licensees of one of the professional versions of Office, with which it was included as a matter of course. However, Cheryl beat me to it with the accurate observation that anyone who bothered to register their Office installations (not everyone did, or does) counted as a "registered user" of FP, whether they actually ever even opened the program or not.
I've been a registered owner of every version of Office Pro starting with Office 97—Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007—but have never used any FP version since I quit with FP2000, which I had purchased. Even if we consider the folks who got FP as a part of Office and actually used it, or who purchased it separately, I would give odds (if the actual number could be accurately assessed) that the great majority of them were not professional developers.
This is not to say that no one ever used FP for business purposes. Certainly it was used by many small businesses to create their online presence. However, within my own experience as an in-house corporate developer, and later as a contractor/consultant, I never saw FP used as a serious Web development tool. Not to say that it never happened; I try to avoid making categorical statements that I can't back up with citations.
The thing is, FrontPage was essentially a hobbyist's tool. Did anyone ever make a living creating sites in FP? Sure, no question. Probably still do, I would imagine. Has it ever been considered by the development community to be a professional Web development tool? Maybe somewhere, but not in my personal experience, and although I list my three years of corporate development experience back in the 90's on my résumé, I do not mention FP at all, for a reason. I want to be taken seriously as a Web developer.
Microsoft has developed a true professional Web development tool with Expression Web. I am happy to include it as one of the applications with which I have expertise, and have no fear that anyone seeing that as one of my qualifications will discount my abilities as a Web developer as a consequence, which could not be said of FrontPage.
Please understand, I do not wish to disparage anyone who is using or has used FrontPage. As I said, I used it myself for three years in the nineties, in a corporate setting, back when the Web was new-formed and there were fifty applications competing with Notepad and Homesite for Webdev share. But the Web has changed dramatically, the ancillary technologies available for and used on the Web have multiplied like rabbits, and user expectations far exceed what they were pre-millennium. Times have changed, the Web has changed, tools have changed, expectations have changed, and in order to go forward, we must change and learn the tools and technologies necessary to design and develop for today's Web, and tomorrow's, not yesterday's.
cheers,
scott
Plural's don't have apostrophe's. It seem's sometime's that any word's ending in "s" get a gratuitous apostrophe. Apostrophe's are used to indicate possessive's and elision's (contraction's or abbreviation's). - Bob,
My book is "Frondation of Microsoft Expression Web" by Apress and was written for v1 (I have debated several times whether I wanted to spend the time/effort required to do another and so far have not) that is still in print. Its available on Amazon and can be ordered from any bookstore. It may also be available at a library. I think there is also an e version available as well. If you do get it and work along with the exercises make sure you go to the associated website and get the updated exercise files since a bug was discovered when the program was released that triggers some very funky behavior with the Chapter 3 exercise. http://foundationsofexpressionweb.com/
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes - Cheryl,
I will get that book. I aslo want to encourage you to do a follow up one on EW 3. I like your teaching style and you show a great deal of tolerance and are never dismissive of anyone on this forum, even of people who make idiotic comments such as myself. We can always use more help. I find myself often buying books even when they seem to overlap with others because you never know what little tidbit you might glean that makes a big difference and some writters just have a knack for conveying a message in more understandable ways. One problem I have always found in books on this topic is they fail to present foundational concepts for those new to the concept. To grasp CSS I had to watch tutorials, read books, play with it in EW for hours, and still I am now reading Eric Meyers book. All along I make cheat sheets that I understand ( in very novice terms) but wonder why I had such a hard time and why someone could not write a book for people like me.
Bob Bob,
In my book I tried writing for folks like you, as much, maybe more about website design, nuts and bolts as opposed to just how to you a program. Some liked that approach, others said I didn't spend enough on the application. No book will please everyone and they are a lot of work for very little return. I wrote that one because I felt there was a need for something that wasn't just on how to use a specific program but I really don't have 300 hours of time to write another one at this time.
I did start a v3 book but conflicts came up so I'm considering doing it more online in sections if I ever get the migration of by-expression to a new platform completed.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes- Chaz,
It has been mentioned, but it should be mentioned again that there are third part easy to use products like those made by Coffee Cup Software that will allow you to do what you want with ease.
Now, let me just add my two sense to this conversation.
I started using FP in 1997. I LOVED FP! Having said that, it was time for it to go. This whole converstion is like someone complaining that sound ruined movies. Times change; things go forward.
This whole conversation is really about the CONCEPT of FP extentions. FP extentions were a problem from word go. They always broke, and they have/had huge security issues. But, they made life simple. Back in 1997, there were no standards, web pages were very basic, at best they had a few tables on them. Now we have CSS, PHP Ajax, ASP.net, etc. MS had to move forward. There was no way to make a product that both incorporated all the features that are currently being developed for web pages and keep the FP functions. And, frankly, if your web page is still dependent on FP, it is time for a redesign.
I certainly understand the desire to not have to learn EW, but if you want to be able to create web pages that are as clean and dynamic as is currenlty out on the web, you will have to learn something.
If EW is too much for you, go to rent-a-coder and hire someone. You will be suprised at how much you can get for a few hundred dollars.
I for one have been struggling with EW for the last 6 months, but it is slowly coming to me. I know that if I can get this under my belt, I will have a great tool for creating web sites that sparkle....and this is what it is all about.
peter This whole conversation is really about the CONCEPT of FP extentions.
Yes and no, I think. I'm getting the impression that some people aren't so much complaining about losing FrontPage Server Extensions, specifically, but that Microsoft didn't replace them with anything. In other words, if Expression Web now shipped with packaged-up, industry-standard replacements for some of these items, and a path to upgrade from one to the other, the griping would be considerably less. That, I think, is a valid discussion, if we can get past the rhetoric.
Paul Bartholomew
Microsoft Expression Web- <quote>
This whole conversation is really about the CONCEPT of FP extentions.
</quote>
Not really
<quote>
FP extentions were a problem from word go. They always broke, and they have/had huge security issues.
</quote>
Not really, I have always used extensions, on multiple sites, and have yet to have the first issue with extensions.
The entire problem with extensions is that they were "Microsoft" FrontPage extensions, but
in reality they were managed by RTR software under contract by Microsoft.
The open source folks cringed at the fact fact that users of FP wanted extensions on their
Apache/UNIX servers.
It was not that extensions were unsecure / broke etc, it's the fact that non windows server admins
never took the time to properly implement them and keep them updated.
For Paul:
The biggest complaint about losing extensions is the number of legacy ( extensions ) sites that need to be revamped.
But at whose expense?
The site owner or the site developer?
MVP Stefan Rusynko ( and others ) broached this very same argument back during the SharePoint Designer CTP before EW was ever forked from SPD.
Expression Web MVP - Paul,
Yes you said it perfectly. That in a nutshell is how I feel about it and thats what my rhetoric filled rantings ( again, please accept my sincere apologies for that) were all about when you boil it all down. I want very much for Microsoft to look at doing something along those lines. There has to be a better way to help us folks migrate and upgrade these sites. Its only natural to want MS support on that. And really, considering how transformation FP was for some of us and really for the web in that sense, it only seems right that you lead the way in that area, you do own the franchise.
We can get past the rhetoric, and I have always been a Microsoft supporter and I know there are legions of loyal Frontpagers who would embrace any progress in that regard. Let me be clear- If I have a choice I will always go with MS. Always have- still want to.
Bob Paul,
I understand what you are saying...and I certainly share many of the frustrations of others, but in going over it in my mind many times, I am not sure who MS could have kept those plug in aspects of FP.
When I started using FP in 1997, most of the pages made at that point were "HOME PAGES." People who wanted to have a web page to share with family or to talk about thier pet turtle. But things have changed so much since then.
The question that comes to my mind is, "can you build a website that has uses CSS and other current standards without have to some degree an understanding of coding" My sense is that answer is NO. BTW, I hate that the answer is no, but I truly think it is. People browsing the net expect web pages to perform. FP pages look clunky and tables are, for the most part, a thing of the past.
Also, it should be mentioned that there are a lot of plug in software that you can use with EW. But you still need to have an understanding of how the whole page comes together. I think MS knew that you can't have a speed demon with training wheels.
Again, to me, the real problem is that the era of the simple web page is over...
Peter- Peter,
I agree with you only as it may pertain to certain sites. Of course there are a great many web users who would not notice if a site is built with CSS or tables layout and the fact remains that a great many small business sites are still basically static sites with product information, PDF data sheets and maybe simple how to videos and very basic functions, they often need little else. For those kinds of applications it seems Frontpage offered a great way to do them.
I am aware of a site involving very high tech electronics and development that was made with FP and still tables based. They have over 300 product images, hundreds of PDF's, a few dozen instructional videos, some flash animations and still use a lot of animated Gifs as well. Its about 120 pages in all I think. The site gets normally gets a few thousand visitors a day and they are all engineers. I really doubt that these visitors, mostly looking for product data sheets or engineering data would ever notice any of the differences or wonder if the site is CSS or tables or notice if it is W3C compliant or not. I am not saying they should not upgrade the site or use CSS and take advantage of the latest techniques- they should. But even so the site users would not notice or care for the most part.
There is a gulf bettween the pros or advanced amatures on the front edge of technology and the casual small business user. While I am sure people made pet turtle sites and other simple sites with a home page and maybe a few other pages thats not what I am talking about at all. I am mainly thinking of the small business user who wants the kind of features I mentioned and also things like search and sitemaps and easy to use forms.
Developers have to concentrate on compliance and be on the front edge. The rest of the users are looking for as out of the box productivity and many will be comming from the FP03 background. I can not see any good reason why one tool can not satisfy both.
I too have been learning EW for a few months. I like it in general and it has enlightened me. I can do things better than before but I doubt any of the under the hood differences will ever be noticed by our visitors. They just are not the kind of folks that are going to be looking at our code.
I am not sure what qualifies as a simple site. To me a simple site would be as noted above and the kinds of companies I know have those kinds of sites and not much more.
All that could be done with FP one stop shopping. It can be done with EW as well. EW does it better and no one is arguing that, it just requires one develop the skills and finds the tools. After they do for the most part they will make sites that do the same thing. Shopping, cart, forums, and third party add ons have been around in the fP era ans still are.
I would think that most business sites I use fall into that catagory.
Bob - Bob,
Don't make the mistake of thinking that standards-based sites and CSS in Web site design are simply signs of a designer with a desire to use up-to-date technologies. There is a reason why it's wise to embrace recent technologies. By using CSS and standards-compliant code, you are creating a site that is much easier to maintain, and you are also building a site that renders more consistently across multiple browsers and platforms. In other words, we're not talking about something that's only important to the site designer. These concepts also affect the site visitor in a major way.
In the world of technology, clinging to old techniques is never a good thing for anyone.
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Software and Books
jimcosoftware.com
jimcobooks.com - I use CSS and current best practices because it saves me money, something small business folks care about. Switching from an old table based layout to CSS reduced bandwidth for one my clients by 76%. Changing from Flash to streaming Sliverlight for my tutorials reduced my bandwidth from constantly over as much as $70 per month to being comfortably under.
The added benefit to both of those is that the sites and videos load noticably faster too. Visitors do notice that. They also notice when something is broken and modern browser are far more picky about coding than older ones (with the exception of Netscape 4 which was very picky and also didn't support a lot of the standards based ways of doing thing.)
Most of photo galleries FrontPage created don't work with Firefox or any non-MS browser. Given that 20-67% of the visitors to my sites (depending on the client's business) use non-MS browsers that's very important. Many of the third party add-ons for FP don't work in modern browsers any better than the photo gallery.
Frankly, I want MS to create a good extensiblity model that won't require recompiling or other change with every version of EW AND to publish that SDK so third parties can feel comfortable creating those add-ins.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes - Jim,
I agree with all that completely. Assuming a site is freindly to the visitors browser then I am just saying I doubt they would notice the under the hood differences.
Regarding site maintenence, CSS looks to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Regarding standardization, well its obvious that thats a good thing since a lack of it got us in the pinch in the first place. I am all for standardization.
I am not for clinging to old technology. I make my living because of changing electronics manufacturing technology. At the same time I notice sometimes a good concept may remain the same but its implementation may improve.
In the internet age a printed page may seem an odd example but I will use it since there will always be something in print most likely. To the reader of a printed page whos purpose is the content thereon it matters not if it was printed by raised type, by offset, by photocopy, by stencil, or by whatever means. I think that applys to web sites in at least some small degree.
Bob - Cheryl,
I am sure the bandwidth issue matters to high traffic sites. Any site I am involved with never runs up overages but I am sure it matters to many.
I am not saying I think its agood idea to use FP now any more than its a good idea to get teeth pulled without novacain.
Maybe when MS does those things you mentioned then I will have the product In EW I wanted all along.
Speaking of Silverlight, Do you know how many people have the capabillity to view it as it compares to flash? I wonder how many have the viewer?
Bob - Bandwidth is two part. The first assonated with hosting. That's when my video files and steamy cones into play. The other is page weight download size. For those on fast broadband it isn't a huge issue but there are more people than most people think still on dial-up or using cellular service for their internet connection.
The site I mentioned with the 70% reduction was concerned with the latter. We reduced html down to 12k a less per page plus a 3k stylesheet page. The stylesheet is usually cached which results in faster page load on subsequent pages. 25k was removed by replacing javascript based image rollovers with css ones. Optimizing images properly saved another 20k (image editor not auto thumbnail) or more.
As for Silverlight I wouldn't use it for adverts but then I don't like Flash adverts either. I use to primarily for video where people have an incentive to install a plug-in if they do not have one installed already. Plugin is available for IE and Firefox (maybe Safari too) for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.
MS MVP Expression Tutorials & Help http://by-expression.com and online instructor led Expression Classes
