Rant - Frontpage

talk random
1

Gaaah! That said, I now proceed to the main part of this post.

A client asked me to fix a page which had some ā€œminorā€ errors. Not a big job, just a little patching here and there. After I had accepted the assignment he told me that I needed some basic Frontpage-experience. Uh-oh, I thought. Frontpage - this doesnā€™t bode well.
And I was right, when I looked at the source-code, what greeted me? Hundreds of pages of unnecessary, incomprehensible code. I am this (") close to designing the whole page from scratch just for the reason that it pains me to see such a page online but there is a horrendous amount of content, so that would take more time than this is worth.
I fixed the page now, but it took way longer than it should have (more money for me but still) and Iā€™m wondering - how many of you have a had (similar) bad experiences with Frontpage?

2

Used it once and refused to so much as open the thing ever again.

Iā€™ve heard people complain before about Dreamweaver adding in spurious code, but Iā€™ve never found it does that to mine. Frontpage on the other hand, systematically set about ruining just about every line I wrote. Sorry Kirupa. :slight_smile: But I canā€™t stand the thing.

Iā€™d rather use Notepad, frankly. :sure:

3

Actually dreamweaver does clean code, maybe I should try importing frontpage html pages in dreamweaver and try cleaning themā€¦

(however bizarrely frontpage html crashes my DW - for instance the tutorial templates crash my DW a few seconds after opening the docā€¦)

4

nah, I tried that, dw didnā€™t find anything to clean. it isnā€™t that the fp code is wrong, itā€™s just too much, specially xml pages :frowning:

5

I think FP2003 produces cleaner code than FP2002, but then again Iā€™m extremely biased towards FP :slight_smile:

Itā€™s ok - I wonā€™t cryā€¦as much :egg:

6

Well to be fair this would have been Frontpage back in about 1999. :slight_smile: But I was so scarred by the experience I havenā€™t tried any later versions. :sure:

7

the code I fought my way through was generated by 2002. maybe itā€™s the fault of the tard who designed the page in the first place, but no program should generate so much unnecessary code, even if a total moron was using it.

8

I have to use frontpage at school, I love dreamweaver 'cause it can produce very clean xhtml code that even I understand. It also supports like every common lanugage (ie. php, asp, cfm, jspā€¦ canā€™t think of the others now). I canā€™t stand using frontpage, has anybody seen the function in dreamweaver for cleaning up word html? It propably helps fontpage too but I havenā€™t tested this.

9

hehe, dreamweaver can be just as bad in the opposite way of writing whack code: what you code doesnā€™t display correctly in the design panelā€¦ itā€™s like dw wants to be really standards compliant, but if youā€™ve got multiple classes of links and nested divs in tables, then DW diesā€¦

:slight_smile:

10

thatā€™s because the design view is based on another one of our favourite M$ non-standards-based products :stuck_out_tongue:

11

if your talking about IE, the page displays fine in it, so i donā€™t see why it wouldnā€™t in DWā€¦

:slight_smile:

12

gawwwwwdd, Frontpage. I have bad memories of that, from back in the days when i just started webdesign. It confused me soo much! if only i started with Dreamweaver!

13

ugh. I recently had to recode a page for a site at work because it was done in dreamweaver and thereā€™s such a slush of code and these lame-arse library elements inset into the pages, and links with the hover coloring done as individual flash files instead of proper css. Such a mess. I donā€™t see yet how anyone could say that DW is any better than frontpage. Both produce masses of excessive slush code and unnecessary ā€œassetsā€. Use notepad, people! or editplus even for the highlighting.

14

do you know thereā€™s an option in dreamweaver to produce valid xhtml code? and it probably did the hover element that way because one of two things: 1. ie doesnā€™t support hover element on anything but links, or 2. whoever did it told dw to make swfs.

Dreamweaver in general produces much cleaner xhtml and supports more languages (that I know of).

15

nope, didnā€™t, i went straight to writing in plain text so I skipped frontpage and dreamweaver/etc minus having to deal with the code they generate every now and then.

either way, I donā€™t appreciate the hassle of fishing through the mess.

16

on top of that nifty feature there is a ā€˜apply source formattingā€™ button that makes it a cinch to indent your HTML. Itā€™s esp. handy when your pasting in plain text and it goes everywhere on the pageā€¦

:slight_smile:

17

cannot stand FPā€¦I tend to use homesite alot for my asp, being able to split screen so you can see your variable is awesome. But DW is the bomb. Matter of fact I got asked to teach a class on it at a local JC. I personally would re-design the page in DW.

18

Iā€™m doing it right now :slight_smile:

19

nothing wrong with frontpage - i only use it for tables though, and hardcode everything elseā€¦as far as the extra codeā€¦for me it amounts to about 3 meta linesā€¦and well highlight and delete is easyā€¦ :wink:

i donā€™t like html programs that do everything for me

iā€™m with k-man on this one, im FP bias.

20

thatā€™s why I like dreamweaver, I can right all my code, it highlights more languages (as far as I know) and then if I need help, I just pull it out and itā€™ll right something for me real quick so I can get back to work :wink: