This article was published in PC Plus issue 153 (Jul 99), and is reproduced here for information purposes only. This is the original copy which was sent to the magazine, not the subbed version which appeared on the page. |
FrontPage 2000This short review of Microsoft FrontPage 2000 appeared as a section in my review of Office 2000.
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[BEGINS]
Website Management and authoring - FrontPage 2000 Premium and Developer editions. FrontPage wasn't originally a Microsoft product, although you'd hardly know it today as it sports a largely Office-standard interface. Both a website manager (file organiser) and HTML page editor, its really big problems, such as its insistence on storing pages in Microsoft-proprietary Web Server containers, and a serious tendency to corrupt hand-coded HTML source, have now been largely overcome, leaving it in the font rank of general-purpose Web authoring tools. Website management is now built into the FrontPage editor, via an Outlook-style side bar. The product comes with just eight multi-page website templates, although these can be created in 60 different styles. FrontPage has some amazing site management tricks, such as slipping a different design theme under the foreground material of an entire website, and automatically repairing links to files you move and rename. The Editor has WYSIWYG, HTML Source and IE-powered browser preview views, with WYSIWYG mode now providing a very Word-like environment complete with format painter, drag-and-drop and background spell checker. FrontPage 2000 is a substantial upgrade from FrontPage 98, and other new features include IE4-compatible absolute and relative positioning, the ability to target pages to specific browser and servers, and a 'show tags' WYSIWYG option borrowed from HoTMetaL Pro. You can now lock individual source files within a web, and create 'nested subwebs', each with its own access rights. FrontPage's source code editor is fairly basic, but the program also integrates with the fearsome Visual Studio script editor/debugger, while FrontPage itself is now programmable via the VBA 6.0 language. Disappointingly, the product lags behind Microsoft's own browser technology, with only partial support for IE4 and IE5 Dynamic HTML., although it's no worse than the industry average in this respect. Two suite-wide Office 2000 features are missing from FrontPage 2000 - the Office Assistant, which is arguably not a great loss, and the new file open/save dialogs, which definitely are. FrontPage 2000 has come a long way, and is now a genuine contender for the 'best Web authoring tool' crown, especially for users who prefer WYSIWYG editing over HTML source coding. Verdict - The best WYSIWYG editor on the market, and leaves your hand-coded HTML intact - perfect for some users. Rating 9/10.
[ENDS] (C) Paul Stephens 1999. All rights reserved.
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