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Also do designers typically use tools like this or do they just hand code? Most of the designers I know like hand coding so that they know exactly what they'll get. It's best to spend a lot of time on your templates to make sure they really work well everywhere.
1. I don't work on Expression Web and can't speak for the team. I'm just an interested bystander.
2. I don't believe the tool has built-in support for designing templates for Drupal, MT, WP, or any other CMS, today (i.e. it doesn't directly understand MT's custom tags, for instance). But this doesn't mean you can't mock up the pages as needed and then introduce the custom CMS tags that are used.
Cheers,
Aaron
The main problem with Front Page wasn't it's nast habit of re-writing code so much as it's tendency to produce incredibly bloated HTML that didn't comply to any standards other than Microsoft's. Show me a site authored in Front Page and I'll show you a site whose KB size I can reduce by 80% whilst greatly improving ease-of-maintenance, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility to disabled users and SEO.
There's a place for these tools, and hopefully Microsoft have significantly improved upon the blight that was Front Page, but they have no real place in any serious web site creation, particularly if it's commercial.
Actually my 10 year old homepage (*cough* I should change that one day, I think I have not touched that in 10 years) was build with it.
I am still missing some of the features in other editors and will give it a try. :)
I agree with you that I would rather use so-called blogging tools to do a new web site or revamp an exiting one like my 'New Jersey Concierges' business site.
All I need is a little spare time.
Serge
Biz:
http://www.njconcierges.com
Blog:
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
Rob
In the next few days I'll see how useful it is to actually change my WP templates - but I was just pleased it imported the "look" of my blog so well!
Rob
I will admit that with each new version, FrontPage got better and less bloated, but I still never found myself using it as my sole tool of choice. I a lot of times found myself using FrontPage for things like fixing nested tables...but now CSS does all that and more, so no more FrontPage.
Im sure when Im 80, kids will really get a kick out of my Web Development Seminars....
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Web Designer has taken me a little longer to grow fond of, however, I am enjoying this tool and would reccomend it to both techies that prefer to code their html, and to those with a more drag and drop approach.
Seth
http://www.inklings-impressions.com
"Registration recommended for this download" - and this is the newer version.
Like I said, no registration required (and no, I do not work at MS, never have, and probably never will (but they could call me and chat about it!)) :)
Rob
Not a flame - just friendly advise.
Rob
open file... crash... something wrong.... reboot and try again.
new crash... humm direct open ms error.
15 minuts to open a single html file... let me see clock again. 15 minuts 4 errors, slow... for shure is a MS development.
Forget it ... i use html kit pro, i have no problems , no errors.
Dreamweaver and FrontPage were/are infamous because they produced shitty, non-standards compliant HTML - eventually DreamWeaver got much better at this and maybe FrontPage did too. Lack of standards compliance hurts web businesses, tool vendors, and users. Especially the disabled.
That's why web developers hated it, Robert. What a short memory you have. Do you not know how hard Zeldman had to fight to get Microsoft, Netscape and the rest of the web clowns of the time to care about standards?
But, whatever, it doesn't matter now.
Actually FrontPage did a pretty good job of supporting the Web standards of that time (remember, back then that was before CSS and XHTML and all that).
www.sampa.com
Are you effin' high? FrontPage produced slow, bloated pages that barely rendered in Internet Explorer and tripped over their dicks in any other browser. WYSIWYG? Maybe if you had some kind of fast-acting degenerative eye disorder. FrontPage was the site editor equivalent of people sending their e-mails in Word documents.
Expression sounds decent enough, but it won't take serious dudes away from Dreamweaver or GoLive and hardcore dudes away from [insert text editor here]. The amateurs? Why bother to dick around in Expression when you can use any number of pre-fab, web-based site and blog builders? Personally, I'm fine with BBEdit.
Scoble, stick to what you know. It's clear as day that webdev ain't it.
Bullshit. I built a whole Netmeeting site that got hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month in it and worked in every browser out there.
Just because you didn't know how to use the tool doesn't mean that it ALWAYS built pages like that.
And, funny enough, FrontPage is becoming SharePoint Designer.
My tool of choice? Notepad++ :)
Also, I don't need any of these multi-$100s programs to do my web design. I'm a purist, give me NotePad, Vi, Vim, Emacs, or whatever, and a Firefox/Flock/Mozilla Browser, and I will be content. These programs are nothing more than text editors with all the codes added anyways. If you got the skill and knowledge, you got power and can save a few extra $$, ^_^.
Having said that, I've been playing with the Visual Web Developer software recently, and if that's anything to go by Microsoft's finally got its act together on web development packages.
Bwahahahahahaha. It's stunning that you continue with the corporate whoring even after you leave the company. FrontPage was a steaming pile of shit and it was put down for a reason.
The biggest sin of FrontPage was inadvertant - it made everyone believe they could design good looking web pages. (Emphasis: good.)
Leave content creation to the writers or bloggers. Leave design to the designers. And yes Robert, just about every good designer back then couldn't stand FrontPage.
Now, as for Expression...
"Install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (see below) before installing Expression Web."
:-O
Wow. Why does MS have to do things like this? Every other company in the world can make a professional web design package that, um, actually work standalone.
From a technical standpoint exactly WHY is .NET required? I know I know, those great widgets. But if I could actually write everything in Notepad - tedious, yes, but possible - than why is it that MS must REQUIRE something like this?
No thanks. I'll stick with my 6 year old Visual Interdev when forced to design things on a Windows box.
It would be interesting to see how quickly/if ever websites turn to using XAML instead of HTML...
I've always preferred HomeSite/CF Studio. While I can use Notepad with the best of them, I'm more productive with an IDE. I have tried using Dreamweaver but am just not a WYSIWYG person. It *is* a much better product now than it was even two years ago and I can see why people like it. Eric Meyer worked with Macromedia on the CSS support and it is impressive how they integrate that into the IDE.
I've also used Front Page when that was the tool my customers used to maintain their site. Once I get templates set up and do a quick training, they can maintain their stuff with a minimum of fuss. It really comes down to using the tools intelligently.
And it was 80% bigger than necessary due to FrontPage bloat, slowing the browser load time, taking up bandwidth unnecessary, and making the server draw more electricty than otherwise required.
I can't believe you called hand coding "incredibly stupid". Those artists who choose to paint using fine brushes rather than spray paint and rollers are just stupidly clinging to the past in your world, huh?
Of course I knew how to do that cause I hand coded sites before FrontPage 1.1 (and a variety of other tools) came out.
The only thing keeping me away from beta 1 is that it can't install on a machine with Office 2007 beta 2.
That's exactly the point for the opposition, in my opinion.
The time you spent learning how to clean up after front page would have been more productivly spent learning how to hand code proper HTML in the first place. Ditto the time required to learn to use the tool correctly in the first place...why spend days and weeks learning the ideosyncracices of putting out decent code with FP/DW/Expression when you can learn the basics of xHTML in a similair amount of time?
My point, inexpertly (OK, drunkenly) expressed, was that WYSIWYG tools require the operator to learn how to work around the weaknesses of the tools and, in the case of mark up languages at least, you're better of learning the language itself, no matter what flavour of *ML it may be.
I tried out FP, DW, and a few other packages with smaller market share in my early webdev career, and it was apparent to me (and to almost every other professional web type person I know) that you're better of learning the roots of the language rather than how a particular tool generates it.
Once again I'm not saying there's no place for these applications - I've tied my gran up in the basement for weeks but she still refuses to maintain her family photo album in anything other than dreamweaver - but to dismiss other means of generating HTML documents as idiotic is a pretty short sighted view point, in my opinion.
Call me stupid, but I still prefer hand-coding html where possible. It creates much cleaner html. Actually most of us use templates of some kind when developing web applications. Even creating a WordPress theme will require you to muck in good old html.
As for WordPress blogging, my preference is to use the plain text view. However with the latest version of improved WYSIWYG editor, I may switch.
On a different note I am not too fond of drupal myself as it tends to get rather complicated when you try to tweak it , extensively if I may add, to your needs. ModX fits my requirements much better. It is more powerful and yet simpler than Drupal. Have you tried it?
In any content management system you still need to design the templates in HTML.
So Expression still has a place for web developers, if not for content writers.
Does Expression generate clean HTML?