FrontPae vs. WebEdit

My office is considering hiring a web designer to redesign our main
web page(s). We have been using FrontPage since the '95 version, and
the person hired to do the web developing wants to design everything
in Web Edit. I'm concerned that this will make the web page(s)
difficult to maintain for all of us FrontPage users. Nobody in our
company uses Web Edit. I need some opinions. Should we take the
plunge, or do what we know? I'm inclined to go with the latter.
Thanks for your input!

Vanessa Dobbins
University of Idaho
College of Natural Resources

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed vdobbins (AT) uidaho (DOT) edu (Vanessa
Dobbins) writing in news:e9bf90f3.0311120914.1965eeb4 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com:

My office is considering hiring a web designer to redesign our main
web page(s). We have been using FrontPage since the '95 version, and
the person hired to do the web developing wants to design everything
in Web Edit. I'm concerned that this will make the web page(s)
difficult to maintain for all of us FrontPage users. Nobody in our
company uses Web Edit. I need some opinions. Should we take the
plunge, or do what we know? I'm inclined to go with the latter.
Thanks for your input!

Vanessa Dobbins
University of Idaho
College of Natural Resources

I am not familiar with Web Edit, but from what I was able to quickly Google
for, it seems to be some browser based editor. That means the "web
designer" is either a) lazy, b) doesn't know what they're doing.

If you have been using FrontPage, you might not be aware of the poor job it
does. It writes bloated code, that is often invalid and proprietary to the
IE browser. Part of the problem with using a program to build pages is
that they use tables for presentation, and depreciated presentational
markup. HTML should be used to structure the document, use CSS for
presentation.

If you get a speech browser, and turn of your monitor, try to navigate your
way around a page made using tables and presentational markup. You'll give
up in frustration in a few seconds, believe me. The reason I mention this
is because of, a) visually impaired visitors, b) visitors using text
browsers (handhelds, etc.), c) search engines. If you're running a
business, you can't afford to be using software that creates pages like
that.

Before you hire someone, make sure that they know how to write valid,
symantically logical markup. That person should be able to open up any
plain text editor, Notepad, what have you, and use it. That person should
also have a thorough understanding of CSS.

I probably have not answered your question, but I hope that I have given
you some food for thought.


--
Adrienne Boswell
Please respond to the group so others can share
http://www.arbpen.com

I think that Adrienne has created a great response. I would 2nd all of
these notions and recommend hiring someone that is fluent in HTML as a
markup, not just someone that knows a piece of software.

jM

"Adrienne" <arbpen2003 (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> wrote

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed vdobbins (AT) uidaho (DOT) edu (Vanessa
Dobbins) writing in news:e9bf90f3.0311120914.1965eeb4 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com:

My office is considering hiring a web designer to redesign our main
web page(s). We have been using FrontPage since the '95 version, and
the person hired to do the web developing wants to design everything
in Web Edit. I'm concerned that this will make the web page(s)
difficult to maintain for all of us FrontPage users. Nobody in our
company uses Web Edit. I need some opinions. Should we take the
plunge, or do what we know? I'm inclined to go with the latter.
Thanks for your input!

Vanessa Dobbins
University of Idaho
College of Natural Resources


I am not familiar with Web Edit, but from what I was able to quickly
Google
for, it seems to be some browser based editor. That means the "web
designer" is either a) lazy, b) doesn't know what they're doing.

If you have been using FrontPage, you might not be aware of the poor job
it
does. It writes bloated code, that is often invalid and proprietary to
the
IE browser. Part of the problem with using a program to build pages is
that they use tables for presentation, and depreciated presentational
markup. HTML should be used to structure the document, use CSS for
presentation.

If you get a speech browser, and turn of your monitor, try to navigate
your
way around a page made using tables and presentational markup. You'll
give
up in frustration in a few seconds, believe me. The reason I mention this
is because of, a) visually impaired visitors, b) visitors using text
browsers (handhelds, etc.), c) search engines. If you're running a
business, you can't afford to be using software that creates pages like
that.

Before you hire someone, make sure that they know how to write valid,
symantically logical markup. That person should be able to open up any
plain text editor, Notepad, what have you, and use it. That person should
also have a thorough understanding of CSS.

I probably have not answered your question, but I hope that I have given
you some food for thought.


--
Adrienne Boswell
Please respond to the group so others can share
http://www.arbpen.com

Adrienne wrote in message ...

If you have been using FrontPage, you might not be aware of the poor job it
does. It writes bloated code, that is often invalid and proprietary to the
IE browser.

With respect to Adrienne, don't take everything she states as the 'Gospel' truth. There are
thousands of 'Frontpage' users with equally thousands of websites that despite a bit of 'bloated'
code still work successfully.

Part of the problem with using a program to build pages is
that they use tables for presentation.

Again, there's nothing *wrong* with tables. They are being successfully and currently used all over
the w-w-web.

Steve :~)

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Steve R."
<stevie_ritchie(NOSPAM)@hotmail.com> writing in
news:cqRsb.3230$xm.26887334 (AT) news-text (DOT) cableinet.net:

Adrienne wrote in message ...
If you have been using FrontPage, you might not be aware of the poor
job it does. It writes bloated code, that is often invalid and
proprietary to the IE browser.

With respect to Adrienne, don't take everything she states as the
'Gospel' truth. There are thousands of 'Frontpage' users with equally
thousands of websites that despite a bit of 'bloated' code still work
successfully.

Yes, they may work just fine, especially in older browsers. However, one
can hide CSS from these older browsers. It might not look as pretty, but
there are less and less people using old browsers.

There are other issues to be considered as well:
1. Bloated code takes longer to download
2. Tables used for presentation are difficult for people using speech
browsers to navigate.
3. Some search engines only index a certain amount of markup - so if there
is a lot of bloat, the entire page may not be indexed.

Part of the problem with using a program to build pages is that they
use tables for presentation.

Again, there's nothing *wrong* with tables. They are being successfully
and currently used all over the w-w-web.

No, there is nothing wrong with tables as long as they are used for what
they are intended for - tabular data.

Have you even had occassion to debug a site that is using nested tables for
presentation? Have you debugged a site using CSS for presentation?
Debugging nested tables takes a LOT longer than making a simple change in
an external style sheet.

--
Adrienne Boswell
Please respond to the group so others can share
http://www.arbpen.com