An Alternative to Dreamweaver: Microsoft's FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage 2003 is an older What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) HTML editor which was originally developed by Vermeer Technologies Incorporated (which was bought by Microsoft in 1996). It is designed to allow novice web designers to create their own web pages in a graphical environment without having to hand-edit code. Since it was intended to compete with the other graphic HTML editors on the market and pull Internet Explorer back into the lead position of web browsers, FrontPage creates pages specifically tailored for IE. The newest version is the one created in 2003, and the software was discontinued in 2006 in favor of two new products: Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Expression Web.
Advantages of FrontPage
FrontPage allows for fast and easy creation of entire websites in a point and click interface, so even the newest users are able to publish themselves on the web. For more advanced users, there is a code view which allows you to see the code as it's being generated and alter it if necessary. Also included are templates which let you select a certain look you would like for your website, modify it to fit your needs, and have a complete website in a very short amount of time.
Other features include script-generation for dynamic websites, graphic generation for items like buttons, and a library of code snippets so that functionality can be added to a web page with no programming experience necessary. It includes functionality for the ASP .NET scripting language among others.
For experienced users, the “Intellisense” automatic completion can save time when designing pages in the code viewer. Intellisense will suggest pieces of code based upon your previous habits and what it anticipates you will need.
Disadvantages of FrontPage
As it is an older piece of software, there will be limited (if any) support for it. Also, it's on the path to becoming outdated as web standards evolve, so you shouldn't become too attached. Another glaring problem is that it designs pages specifically for Internet Explorer, and while Internet Explorer is a very popular web browser due to its being the default, it could generate non W3C code that is not compliant with Firefox, Opera, and other very popular browsers.
As the years progress, FrontPage will not keep up with Adobe's Dreamweaver, and it certainly doesn't offer the same functionality and ease of use.
Conclusions
FrontPage can get the job done if you're new to web development, but there are other options out there. It could be the cheaper option, though, because it came bundled with Microsoft Office, and you may already have a copy of it. But since it's not up to date and suffers from the most issues, it is definitely not worth the cost to buy an older copy of Microsoft Office for it. If you want to use a Microsoft product, your best bet would be to purchase their new one. If you already have a copy laying around, you should try it out to see if it suits your needs before you go shopping for Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web.
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