Re: Frontpage 2000 vs. Dreamweaver 2

Peter:

Dreamweaver vs. FrontPage 2000 -- And you expect objectivity??

They are both excellent programs regardless of any of the
verbiage detractors may come up with.

(I see that several advocating hand coding have tried to get you
to work by hand -- but if I read you correctly, you were
interested in comparing those two, specific programs)

The extra cost of Dreamweaver is why we use FrontPage. It's just
that simple. And speaking of cost, if you get deep into ASP and
need to upgrade, remember that Microsoft's Visual InterDev is an
"upgrade" at reduced cost from FrontPage.

However-- Is it, InterDev-- in turn, as good as Drumbeat for ASP
?? We frankly do not know as they each have "features" the other
one doesn't.

Some Points to consider:

A web page is a web page is a web page. All the software
discussed is just a tool and when all the flame wars are over,
most of us use several different "tools" to create and maintain
our pages.

FrontPage downsides ...

The most popular feature of FrontPage is also the biggest pain in
the caboose and we do not use it. We are speaking of the infamous
Extensions. They do allow a lot of special features including SSI
and ASP. They keep track of the links and Themes and take the
place of FTP'ing the pages to the web server.

Very very slick. (When they work) However, people seem to have a
lot of trouble understanding them and keeping them working. In
this respect, FP is kind of in the same boat with Cold Fusion,
albeit a lot cheaper. Also a lot of smaller, country type ISP's
don't support them.

On the good side, FrontPage is one of, if not THE, most popular
web editors around and the discussion lists, support and goodies
like JBots abound. No other program has the support that
FrontPage does.

I used to use NotePad for some of my hand editing till I found
out how much slicker the HTML view in FrontPage worked. (The
ability to click on an object in the Normal View and click to the
HTML View and have that code automatically highlighted is nice.

On this list, people are always asking us to look at their code.
Using IE-4, I go to their page and click on the Edit Icon.
FrontPage launches and you simply highlight the offending element
and switch to the HTML View. Voila!!)

Actually, I think Dreamweaver will do the same but I have been
told it does not.
Still--If I had the money, I would love to work with Dreamweaver
for a few months.

Bottom line as I see it:

Both good--No, GREAT-- programs. But I still have yet to convince
myself that Dreamweaver is worth the high price they ask for it.

But -- If you have the money to spare, just flip a coin.

Ted Temer
Temercraft Designs Redding, CA
temer(at)c-zone.net
http://www.temercraft.com
http://www.newsredding.com/


>Hi there,
>
>At the risk of starting a flame war, can I have your honest
opinions on how
>these products compare.  I've tried Dreamweaver and been
impressed with it
>(with the exception of the price tag!) but have recently seen a
good site
>built with FrontPage 2000.  At under 1/2 the price of
Dreamweaver it looks
>very tempting!  Is it good?  Part of the problem I suppose is
that I can see
>when a site is built with FP2000 but cannot tell if one is built
with
>Dreamweaver, and thus cannot tell which of these products is
used to build
>the better sites on the net.
>
>Oh, and finally, anyone got any explanation for the difference
in price of
>software between the US and UK?  I was looking up the prices of
Dreamweaver,
>and the cheapest in the UK was 269 pounds sterling, compared
with only 209
>dollars at www.pricescan.com!
>
>Thanks for any assistance you can offer.
>Peter. UK
>

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