Review

Created: July, 2000

Microsoft FrontPage 2000 for Windows 95/98/NT 4

By Terry Fong, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

If you need to build a quick and dirty Web site for personal use or a small business, FrontPage 2000 is an easy-to-use, configurable site-creation tool that has eliminated many of the headaches of earlier versions. But anyone who wants to build a large site may be in for some problems.

If you don't want to learn HTML (hypertext markup language, used to create Web pages), FrontPage 2000 looks like a dream come true. It comes chock full of wizards, templates and style sheets. If you move a file or image from one directory to another, FrontPage will remember the move and update all links on the site that reference that file or image. Site maintenance doesn't get simpler than that.

FrontPage uses design themes to give a Web site a unified look and feel. More than 50 themes are provided, each with its own set of colors, graphics and fonts. You can't build a theme from scratch, but elements can be modified. Templates and style sheets can be created, modified and saved so they can easily be re-applied, saving a lot of work later on.

FrontPage also has basic project management capabilities, allowing tasks to be assigned. Files can be checked in or out and various reports can be viewed, showing such things as broken hyperlinks, slow-loading pages and unlinked files, allowing you to track down or spot potential trouble spots.

Many complaints about older versions of FrontPage have been addressed. For instance, FrontPage 97 used to add many bits of unwanted code to pages. This has been, for the most part, eliminated. The code it produces is no longer immediately hateful to those who code by hand.

Changes you make to Web pages, even non-standard tags, are now retained. Technologies such as ActiveX, Javascript, VBScript and Cascading Style Sheets, to name a few, can be turned on or off.

Best of all, it no longer necessary to install the often despised FrontPage Web Server on your hard drive.

But the server that hosts your site must support FrontPage Extensions, especially if you want to utilize code for such features as search forms or counters (which usually require Perl coding or CGI-bin access). Working without the FrontPage extensions on the server is a headache you don't want to experience.

Three tabs give easy access to views of the page you're working on: normal, HTML and preview. The HTML tab allows direct access to HTML and will be favored by those who like to write their own code.

The preview mode shows what the page will look like in a Web browser, using a modified version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This preview mode, alas, is also inaccurate. What you see is not always what you get.

And while code can now be targeted for Netscape Navigator, not just Internet Explorer, resulting pages can look awful in Netscape.

The normal mode offers an easy-to-use MS Word-like interface that allows you to enter, format and place page elements such as text, tables and images. Its table creation tool is flawed, however, and difficult to use. Fine-tuning spacing is also very finicky. In addition, creating a link on one item will often create the link on another part of the page above or below the item.

Be prepared to reboot at any time, especially when importing a large existing site. During one test, a 500-page import precipitated a crash. On another occasion when importing a 245-page site, it didn't.

FrontPage 2000 comes as a stand-alone product or as part of the Office 2000 Suite Premium Edition and retains the Office menu structure and look. Web pages can be quickly created from any document produced by Word, Excel spreadsheet, or Access databases. Opening a page from FrontPage that was saved by another Office application will open that application.
It has inherited the anemic help capabilities of Microsoft's Office 2000 Suite, without having the animated paper clip Office Assistant to kick around. Fortunately, the entries tend to go into a great level of detail.

Using an interface familiar to anyone who has used MS Office, FrontPage 2000 is an easy-to-use tool for an HTML virgin whose Web site requirements are modest. If you need a larege site that will see heavy traffic demands, however, you really have only two options: bite the bullet and learn the technology -- or hire a professional to do it for you.

Reviewer's rating: 3.25 / 5

Comments: If you use MS Office extensively and want to build a small Web site without learning have to learn HTML, FrontPage 2000 will get you there using an interface you're already familiar with. Large, complicated Web sites will still require expertise or a professional hand.

System requirements:
Pentium 75 MHz; Windows 95 or later or Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 or later, 16 MB RAM (32 MB for NT) plus an additional 8 MB of RAM for FrontPage, 167 MB of available hard-disk space (typical installation), a mouse, a CD-ROM Drive; VGA or higher-resolution monitor (Super VGA recommended).

More info: http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage

Price: $115 US, $200 Canadian. Upgrade: $50 US, $90 Canadian.