Rant - Frontpage

[Total Biscuit]

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

A client asked me to fix a page which had some "minor" 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 doesn'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 I'm wondering - how many of you have a had (similar) bad experiences with Frontpage?

[Kitiara]

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

I've heard people complain before about Dreamweaver adding in spurious code, but I'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. :) But I can't stand the thing.

I'd rather use Notepad, frankly. :sure:

[mlk]

Actually dreamweaver does clean code, maybe I should try importing frontpage html pages in dreamweaver and try cleaning them...

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

[Total Biscuit]

nah, I tried that, dw didn't find anything to clean. it isn't that the fp code is wrong, it's just too much, specially xml pages :(

[kirupa]

I think FP2003 produces cleaner code than FP2002, but then again I'm extremely biased towards FP :)

It's ok - I won't cry....as much :egg:

[Kitiara]

Well to be fair this would have been Frontpage back in about 1999. :) But I was so scarred by the experience I haven't tried any later versions. :sure:

[Total Biscuit]

the code I fought my way through was generated by 2002. maybe it'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.

[Jeff Wheeler]

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, jsp... can't think of the others now). I can't stand using frontpage, has anybody seen the function in dreamweaver for cleaning up word html? It propably helps fontpage too but I haven't tested this.

[bodyvisual]

hehe, dreamweaver can be just as bad in the opposite way of writing whack code: what *you* code doesn't display correctly in the design panel.. it's like dw wants to be really standards compliant, but if you've got multiple classes of links and nested divs in tables, then DW dies..

:)

[λ]

hehe, dreamweaver can be just as bad in the opposite way of writing whack code: what *you* code doesn't display correctly in the design panel.. it's like dw wants to be really standards compliant, but if you've got multiple classes of links and nested divs in tables, then DW dies..

:)
that's because the design view is based on another one of our favourite M$ non-standards-based products :P

[bodyvisual]

if your talking about IE, the page displays fine in it, so i don't see why it wouldn't in DW...

:)

[ya3]

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!

[JRPereira]

ugh. I recently had to recode a page for a site at work because it was done in dreamweaver and there'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 don't see yet how anyone could say that DW is any better than frontpage. Both produce masses of excessive slush code and unnecessary "assets". Use notepad, people! or editplus even for the highlighting.

[Jeff Wheeler]

do you know there'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 doesn'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).

[JRPereira]

nope, didn'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 don't appreciate the hassle of fishing through the mess.

[bodyvisual]

do you know there'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 doesn'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).on top of that nifty feature there is a 'apply source formatting' button that makes it a cinch to indent your HTML. It's esp. handy when your pasting in plain text and it goes everywhere on the page...


:)

[DDD]

cannot stand FP....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.

[Total Biscuit]

I'm doing it right now :)

[prstudio]

nothing wrong with frontpage - i only use it for tables though, and hardcode everything else...as far as the extra code...for me it amounts to about 3 meta lines...and well highlight and delete is easy... ;)

i don't like html programs that do everything for me

i'm with k-man on this one, im FP bias.

[Jeff Wheeler]

that'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 it'll right something for me real quick so I can get back to work ;)