Rayna — Sat, 09 Feb 2002 03:58:19 +0000

An application is only as good as the person using it I say......Any WYSIWYG application can produce bloated, nasty code.

I think if you trained your client how to use FP and gave them a check list of things not to do you would be pretty safe. Also using SSI and CSS with FP would make your life so much easier also.

I have set up sites for clients using FP and put all the content in one directory and called it using SSI. All the files were named so that they could be identified easily and it made it almost impossible for them to screw up the site template. So basically they would never actually edit a page that contained the site template and if they screwed something up it was harmless and easy to fix.

Brooke — Fri, 08 Feb 2002 22:20:17 +0000

I would have to say that fp is easy to use - but like most people here, I used it, and then after I learned a bunch I switched to dreamweaver. Even with DW I do not use everything because I hand code some things.

But I do have sites that were orginially created with fp and now I use dw on them. Everything works just fine!

Brooke

detox — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 13:55:04 +0000

Gotta wade into this and slam FP for a minute!!

I have to say that FP is like the yahoo of web editors. We all used it at first to get online but then we realized there were better things out there. Actually I never used it,I was scared off by my first IT boss who in my interview told me that If i used FP then I definitely wasn;t going to get the job!

Anyway the moral to the story is unless you want the headaches of switching, you probably would be better off sticking with the devil you know. Only problem is that FP can screw up a page with only a H1 tag and hello written in it!

openmind — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 10:02:32 +0000

I must admit the only thing I really use FP for is the layout of my site interms of folder navigation, etc.

I used to use the themes, formmail, counters, rollovers, etc... until I worked out how to do it myself!

As a training tool its pretty good, the more expreienced I become, the less I use its features.. Its now pretty mush just an editor to me...

For example, my first attempt at a database driven site was created using FP's built in code generators. It worked fine but I didn't have a clue what the code was doing as it was so garbled by FP extensions. So I gave up on the idea and taught myself ColdFusion!

Megan — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 02:24:06 +0000

The biggest concern I would have with this situation is FP messing up code you write by hand or in other applications. So, just to be on the safe side you should probably at least test it in FP and make sure it doesn't screw anything up.

Brian Farkas — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 01:51:39 +0000

Is a FP-built site easier to maintain with FP than a regular hand-coded site?

I suppose it can be, because FrontPage sites are able to use "themes"... HOWEVER- you can accomplish the same effect with a hand-coded SSI tag. Personally, for WYSIWYG HTML editors (visual based editors) I prefer Macromedia's Dreamweaver over FrontPage.

Does the site need to be "published" with FP?

It doesn't need to, unless you're going to be using the FP extensions. In which case, you should publish with FP, and ONLY with FP... In other words, do not use FTP to publish your site once you've started with FP, as it can screw up your FrontPage extensions.

What the heck are all these FP extensions anyway?

They allow you to create quick email forms, etc. as was mentioned above.

openmind — Mon, 04 Feb 2002 23:24:10 +0000

Depends really which version of FP u r using...

FP98 was horrible..two seperate windows for navigator and editor but FP2000 is much better with its combined views...

I build my sites with FP but use AceFTP to publish them simply because I have more cobntrol over which files to publish. FP will check for the last modified dates on your local and compare them against your server and uplod any out of date. Trouble is it deletes any files on your server that aren't on your local and vice versa which can be a pain. It does prompt you but its still a bind...

The site does not "need" to be published with FP. erm thats that really

FP extensions are natty little files that let you quickly setup a formmail page, web counter, etc...
Downside is your server needs to have FP extensions installed. Upside is any self respecting idiot can do this themselves