Microsoft FrontPage

[MazY]

Not so much a tip but rather a mini-rant about the FrontPage snobbery that seems to exist on the web today. (If you ever want tips for FrontPage, let me know and you'll have wheelbarrows full of them!)

There is absolutely no reason on this earth not to use FrontPage for designing your web site. You will hear that it writes awful awful HTML code and to a degree this is true. It isn't awful but it is less than perfect. You will also hear that the templates are awful too and I will agree with that too. So don't use them. You don't have to at all. I don't and never will.

From the perspective of managing a large web site, in my opinion, there are few that do it better than FP. I also use DreamWeaver too to "tidy up" the HTML that FrontPage creates. But if I relied on DreamWeaver to create an entire site over FrontPage then I would be extending development time at least four-fold. And I will happily stand my site against most DreamWeaver created sites. FrontPage is as good as the person using it.

So, despite what you read and hear, ignore the snobbery and the "yeah but it's not real web designing is it?" questions and use what you feel comfortable with. Results are the bottom line, not the kudos of being able to say "I use DreamWeaver".

There, I'm done lol

[highman]

>FrontPage is as good as the person using it.

lol.....true enough, I must admit to using it occ. but always clean the code up by hand afterwards, but as far as speed of dev. it is easy and quick

So thats a 2nd vote..... but clean the code up.... unless you are a FP guru and set it up not to add all its little extras :)

[ihelpyou]

Yep. Agreed. I have seen many designers who use FrontPage and nothing else, ,... I would hire them over others who code using NotePad.

Not all of them, but there are many who do a great job. I started with FP and continue to use it and DreamWeaver. Of course, I do no do web design, as my site shows. ;)

BUT, it sure does not hamper me from getting a few good ranks. :cool:

[JuniorHarris]

I enjoyed using front page as it was especially helpful when first learning HTML with the WYSIWYG interface. Though it wasn't long before I began to explore source view, and some simple ASP scripting. Once the scripting got complex I stepped up to Visual Interdev specifically for the ASP support. It too does provide a WYSIWYG type interface. However I typically write no static HTML anymore but use ASP to generate it for me so consequently I am always in source view which is more or less WYCIWYG (what you code is what you get)!~ ;)

[rmueller]

Just my opinion, I've had folks say "You use FP?" like they were shocked, but I've learned a lot with it, and I keep learning.

I get lots of great comments on my site which is completely done in FP (all 200+ pages of it!)

I've tried others but I always bop back to FP to see how I like it. Yes, I probably need to clean up the code, but sometimes we gotta say Hey, it works!
Smiles!!:D

[MazY]

Originally posted by rmueller
I get lots of great comments on my site which is completely done in FP (all 200+ pages of it!)

I think that is the irony of FrontPage as well. It is considered by some "professional" web designers as a kid's toy to start learning from. And yet, I contest that the bigger the web site, the more valuable FrontPage becomes. I do not believe that anything manages large web sites as well as FP. Like you, my previous one was some 150+ pages and the current one is now standing at 80+ pages. One change and apply it across the board. Lovely! Publish - let it report to me when it finds link conflicts, etc. That is life made easy!

[Mel]

Hi All another vote for FP which I use regularly. I especially like the ability of FP to make universal changes across a site and the generation of absolute links when you publish..

BTW I just read in his site the other day the Danny Sullivan is also an FP user.

[MazY]

"I especially like the ability of FP to make universal changes across a site and the generation of absolute links when you publish.. "

Life doesn't really get much easier does it? :p

[Advisor]

I'm not personally a FP user, and from what I understand, it's a whole lot better at making clean code than it was years ago. Like Mazy said, it's the user, not the software. But I would have to say to never, ever, ever use Microsoft Publisher to do create web sites. No, siree! You can read my rant on this in a past Rank Write at:

http://www.rankwrite.com/archives/issue037.htm

Jill

[MazY]

I can almost match that. I was once asked to look at a site that been made up from individual pages created in Word HTML format. Now that was nice...

[Advisor]

Yes, but at least Word doesn't change the entire page into one big giant graphic!

Here's a funny story...we were recently in the running for a big SEO job. By mistake (or unwittingly) the woman emailing all the SEO firms some info, left all the email addresses in the cc field. So of course, I went a digging to see who our competition was. One of the SEO companies actually had a Publisher designed Web site! hahahahaha...and they were doing SEO? Puh-leeze! That was the funniest thing I ever saw.

Jill

[markymark]

On bigger SEO projects, I seem to spend a ridiculous amount of time changing the code of pages to make them more search engine friendly. The worst offender for this is.....FrontPage ? Well, no actually it isn't -it's Dreamweaver. I am in the middle of a job for a UK e-commerce site - the whole thing done in DW/Fireworks, layers everywhere, code for rollovers that should have been 2Kb which were actually about 7Kb.

With this, the first line of body text came on line 265 or so. I had to re-code the entire template from scratch. Now the first line of body text appears at line 18 and the overall page size has gone from 72Kb to 22Kb. Bloody Dreamweaver.

I get similar problems with FP, but nothing like the rubbish you can create with DW. Hand-coding still has its advantages, you know.

[bigDugan]

I use Front Page too. You do have to watch the HTML code that FP generates, but I do a LOT of straight HTML coding anyways. I like FP because it gives me a secure connection to my websites. I used to do everything with notepad and then FTP the pages to the webserver, but as you may already know, when using FTP, the username and password are not encrypted. But FP is. I still do mostly raw coding, but FP can be handy when moving files/directories, or for backing up the site.

[jimi_l]

I use Dreamweaver and I too get the cracks about lousy code but you know what-WHO CARES!!
It seems to me the only people who even care about code is other developers and to me the proof is in the pudding(as it were).If it works,it works,period.I believe the site will speak for itself,crappy or exceptional, and only the "geeks" of the world will even even bother to look at it(code wise that is).
PS My sites tend to be more the former than the latter but thats ok too.My links all work,my ideas is persented and all is right with the world:)
Ill get there
jimi_l

[Advisor]

Ah, but Jimi, the search engines care! If they cannot spider and crawl your site because of crappy code, you will not be listed, and not be ranked high. Then no one will see your site at all. As I say on my site, you'll be a beautiful billboard on a deserted highway!

Jill

[jimi_l]

True,
HOWEVER
I didnt know spiders cared about code,just text relavent to the tags and title.


jimi_l

[ihelpyou]

Well, spiders do care about your code BUT I have found that the code stuff is overblown a tad. My site is VERY bad with coding. Yes. I did it myself and I am not good at all. The spiders seem to have no problems with it.

[markymark]

While spiders need to be able to get through your site, meaning the code has to -at least- work, the main point is in getting your main text as high up the page as possible. If you've got lots of rubbish DW or FP code cluttering up the first 50 or 60 lines of code, this becomes more difficult. I almost always re-code pages in order to allow the spiders to reach the important parts of the page as quickly and simply as possible.

[highman]

Totally agree, but its not always down to FP or DW one of the most common things I see is the over use of tables when not needed, in line style sheets and the worst of all style sheets but with font tags at the start and end of every line of text in the page! now whats all that about?

Empty <td>'s arghhh..... the list goes on

Clean code helps more than you may think

[markymark]

I have read several web design articles that advise you to do exactly the thing you are talking about. The theory goes that you have your css to create an exact font size while keeping the font tags for those browsers that aren't css compatible. Have you ever heard such rubbish ?

Empty <td> tags - that one is a killer, but what about sites with 12 layers that only work properly in IE5.5 plus. Ah, the joys of SEO.

[Mel]

I have been using a freeware program called "Replace Em" which allows you to specify a whole list of potential html code problems and apply corrections to an entire directory of files at one fell swoop. It also has an automatic backup feature, and the ability to put the newly formatted files into another directory so you can then run another batch on the original files.

I have not figured out all the uses for this tool, but can see some great SEO uses for it, besides cleaning up your code in minutes.

[MazY]

I cannot remember the last time that I saw a search engine that was not more than capable of telling the difference between table code and body text.

If the problem was as bad as some would have us believe, almost all page descriptions on Google would be <TD> <FONT SIZE=..... etc. This just isn't the case.

God only knows that my own site has nested table inside of nested table and it's just fine and dandy.

[highman]

I cannot remember the last time that I saw a search engine that was not more than capable of telling the difference between table code and body text.

lol......of course they can judging on some of the nightmares out there, they do a damn good job of filtering excessive, useless code

If the problem was as bad as some would have us believe, almost all page descriptions on Google would be <TD> <FONT SIZE=..... etc. This just isn't the case.

It is as bad as some of us believe..... I know I see it all day long, good, clean, trim and validated code can reduce a page size / load time in half. With some spiders on a time limit to index pages serving them quick cannot be a bad thing.

Just have a look at your code and remove all the white space put in by DW or FP to make it easy to read, save it and look at the file size..... impressive uh?


Lean and Mean, its not the answer, but every little helps
;)

[JuniorHarris]

>the main point is in getting your main text as high up the page as possible

>good, clean, trim and validated code can reduce a page size / load time in half. With some spiders on a time limit to index pages serving them quick cannot be a bad thing.

Good points mates!~ :) These are not silver bullets, but every little part counts and adds to the total optimization value. So where possible, any/all issues should be addressed as they very well have potential to influence results.

[analog]

As a server admin, I am concerned with processor usage and bandwidth usage. If FP or DW creates a page that is 70+K, that can be accomplished with code that is only 20K, the latter is far more appealing to me.

If you have a very busy site, just fixing the code could allow you to significantly reduce your bandwidth usage. Now, it all depends on how you have your site hosted, but if you are paying per gigabyte of transfer this little savings can add up VERY quickly.

Also, if the server has mod_gzip installed, it is compressing the data before it sends it out. While this helps with bandwidth, it puts extra load on the server. So, on a busy server, your site is slower.

[ihelpyou]

Good points analog. What do you think about the code of this board software?

I think we should set the zlib compression to a 9 instead of one. :D That way the pages would load SUPPER fast. Who cares how much load it is to the server? :eek:

[analog]

So far, I am pretty impressed with the code of vbulletin. The pages are fairly large, but there is a lot of info in them. The code is really pretty clean.

limiting the number of posts per page to 20 helps alot. I don't know how much raising the zlib compression to 9 would help, considering the pages are pretty small as it is.. right now, the server can definitely handle it, and should be able to for quite some time. I have no intention of overloading it!

Go ahead, give it a whirl, and we will see what blows up ;o) Just Kidding

[MazY]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
That way the pages would load SUPPER fast. Who cares how much load it is to the server? :eek:

I'm all for a quicker supper! Lord only knows that I get hungry towards the end of the night. ;)

[Web Witch]

NEVER, never use layers (absolute positioning); in DW you can 'Modify'>'Layout Mode'>'Convert Layers to Table'. DW also has a command to clean up HTML 'Commands'>'Clean Up HTML'. The reason I'm saying NEVER use layers is that I've found that different combinations of browser and MS operating systems can cause layers to go bonkers causing layers to get strewn all over your web page. When someone and only one person complained about my web page I brought it into DW and converted the layers to a table and that ended the problem.

Never use to many nested tables either. I've seen NS do some pretty scary things with nexted tables.

1. I would tend to say hand coding is the best.
2. DW if used properly is second best and my choice because I don't want to have to code.
3. FP bye-bye....

I now take old FP sites and bring them into DW to clean up the code.

My .02 worth....
WW

[Mel]

Hi WebWitch:

I'm not quite ready to write FP off yet - by using CSS to format my pages I have reduced my home page from 20K to 13k with the same content. Hope to get even lower by my final pass.

[Web Witch]

DW also utilizes CCS.

WW

[ihelpyou]

analog, I just upped the zlib compression level to 9 instead of one.

wOW. pages are extremely fast loading now! :shocked:

[Mel]

Sorry Webwitch

I should have mentioned that I am using FP rather selectively -

I do not use any of their templates
I set up and edit my own stylesheets using TopStyle
I clean up the FP code using BK Replace Em which allows me to identify, specify recoding details and recode the entire site according to my setup in a second or two.

This allows more flexibility, and at the same time reduces the "Code Bloat" common to both programs.

[ihelpyou]

hey Mel, December 8th? That's my sisters bday also, and I like her bunches! :)

[MazY]

On the subject of cleaning up HTML....

A product that I rather like and use quite frequently because of its superb "batch formatting" is Pretty HTML

The Link (http://www.mpp.at/)

Ugly interface but a great product to have in the toolbox. You can save various formatting preferences and just pull each one for specific tasks.

[analog]

Doug,

Just noticed your post. I have seen no noticable hit to server load, so keep it that way! Maybe when the site gets REALLY busy we will have to turn it down, but for now, no problemo!