One way to create web pages from scratch without using HTML is
to use an editor that hides the HTML from you, letting you edit
a web page as easily as you would use a word processor. These
programs are called WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get)
editors.
Microsoft's FrontPage is one of the most popular WYSIWYG
editors, mainly because it comes as part of Microsoft Office,
which lots of people buy just to get Word and Excel. FrontPage
is, therefore, seen as a cheap and easy solution, and the fact
that it works very similarly to the other Microsoft Office
programs is a plus as well.
Using FrontPage
FrontPage is very easy to get started with: you can either
create a single page, or a whole 'web' (FrontPage's word for a
set of inter-connected pages). You can use the buttons on the
toolbar to do simple things like set your text's font, make text
bold and italic, make links and insert graphics.
Going up to the menus will give you access to a few more
complicated functions, such as table creation. Part of the
reason FrontPage is so popular is that it has all sorts of
little scripts ready to insert into your page, including hit
counters and animations.
FrontPage Extensions
FrontPage is quite unique in that many web hosts have special
'FrontPage Extensions' installed, that allow to upload your site
easily from FrontPage to your host. In most cases, though,
you'll be better off just saving the files using FTP. You will
also need to have the Extensions installed on your server if you
want the forms FrontPage produces to work, or if you want to be
able to add its search function to your site.
Really, the Extensions are nothing more than a good reason not
to use FrontPage to design any dynamic elements of your site -
it will cause you no end of trouble. FrontPage is only really
any good when it comes to designing static pages.
FrontPage Templates
One of FrontPage's strong points, however, is that it has an
easy-to-use templating system. This means that you can download
templates and easily use them to create new pages in FrontPage.
It will create a navigation system for you as you go, using
information from the template. This can be a quick and easy way
to get started on your website, although you'll often need to be
careful to avoid doing anything that causes the carefully
worked-out layout of the template to break.
Problems with FrontPage
FrontPage's biggest problem is that it produces wildly
non-standard 'Microsoft HTML'. This HTML is bad enough to be
completely un-editable by anyone who isn't also using FrontPage,
and has a tendency to display wrongly in any browser apart from
Internet Explorer. Even the default template you see before
you've typed a word in FrontPage isn't valid HTML!
Worse, because e of the amount of repetition FrontPage
introduces into your pages, they can often be much larger than
they need to be and so take much longer for your visitors to
download than they should. It's bad enough that many sites offer
programs designed specifically to do nothing but clean up
FrontPage's terrible code.
Part of the reason there's quite a stigma attached to FrontPage
amongst web users is that it tends to produce pages that are
extremely amateurish. Some FrontPage sites can even crash web
browsers, because their authors decided to use FrontPage's
various animated navigation elements - FrontPage is all too
happy to quickly add in so much Javascript and Java that a
website becomes unmanageable. Page transitions are particularly
bad.
Overall, trying to create and manage a website with FrontPage
can be a big headache - it's all too easy to hit one of
FrontPage's bugs and mess something up, or load it with too many
proprietary features to the point where it's pretty much
unusable to anyone. Worse, if you open a half-finished web page
in FrontPage, its code will be messed up beyond repair.
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