EWD and FP extensions (Full Version)

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Andy from Spain -> EWD and FP extensions (10/3/2006 6:35:54)

Hi

I've been looking at Expression Web Designer a bit more in the last couple of days and there's one thing I can't get my head round. My understanding was that Frontpage extensions were going to be scrapped yet there's still all the old webbot stuff like search, marquee, include files, shared borders etc. Is this some sort of legacy thing for Frontpage users, and is there a there a equivalent for EWD only?

Cheers
Andy



Reflect -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/3/2006 10:37:17)

http://www.frontpagewebmaster.com/m-340586/tm.htm

Take care,

Brian



Andy from Spain -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/3/2006 11:38:55)

Hi Brian

I read that earlier but I was just trying to get clarification regarding if there was going to be some replcement or will new EWD users carry on using webbots. Just seems a bit messy.

Andy



mar0364 -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/3/2006 12:26:01)

After spending significant time in the program I'm wondering the same thing. For my taste I'd like to see the FP ext go away forever.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/3/2006 13:02:17)

Doesn't sound like anyone knows what is going to happen, I asked in the above thread "What is going to replace it?" and nobody has been able to answer that question.

It looks like the only way we will get the quick 1 click contact forms and such is if someone writes an extension for it directly for EWD. The extension will most likely be limited to ASP/.net only though, since MS didn't bother with support for PHP.

One of the main reasons I would use FrontPage is for their simple contact forms/hit counters, as well as a couple other great components. EWD needs something that will accomplish the same thing, without the ugly webbot code. Heck, even a text file database is better than nothing!

I'm trying not to waste too much time with EWD, if MS doesn't feel the need to provide support for the HUGE market with PHP, then they won't get my support. MS should of added the term "ASP" or something like that to it.

quote:

For my taste I'd like to see the FP ext go away forever.

- They are right at the point now where they actually are starting to away. I've talked with cPanel (one of the largest control panels for unix/linux) and they plan to keep FPSE until it becomes too insecure to offer it. I'm not sure what the updates and such are like for FPSE. If FPSE don't need to be updated, then they will stay for a very long time. Once cPanel drops support for FPSE, TONS of hosts/clients will be left hanging. I just did another site last week, took me a little over a minute to insert a complete contact form with confirmation and results via e-mail.

Right now the download information for FPSE for unix/linux has been removed from the developer's website. It is no longer being released on their site, however, it is still available elsewhere.



Andy from Spain -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/5/2006 4:13:14)

Hi

This appears to make things a bit clearer http://blogs.msdn.com/xweb/archive/2006/09/09/747051.aspx

Andy



BobbyDouglas -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/5/2006 13:39:15)

This is interesting...
quote:

we believe that your best solution may well be moving into a more managed web environment like SharePoint, where the vagaries of html and standards compliance will not impact you.



Thomas Brunt -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/5/2006 15:42:51)

It is interesting.

Actually, I'm going to Vegas in a few weeks to find out exactly what that means.

t



caz -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/5/2006 18:04:23)

Thanks for that link Andy, things are a little clearer now - only a little mind. I was glad to read this,

quote:

FPSE actually plays two distinct roles for Microsoft’s HTML editors. The first is the role you may already be familiar with: FPSE communicates with your web server to download and upload files. This part of FPSE also makes link fix-up work. This is not the feature we are removing. Expression Web will continue to support the ability to use FPSE as a way to connect to your web server and perform link fix-up.


Phew, publishing and site management is a feature that I would miss if it was to be done away with. But the future of FP Includes seems unclear to me, they do not need FPSE to work but even so they appear to be dropping them- why? They are a very handy design time feature and I would find it a pain to have to use SSI using a server to see the design result.



Thomas Brunt -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/6/2006 10:30:54)

Are you sure MS IS dropping include pages?

I've used them on a few EW projects recently.

t



Andy from Spain -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/6/2006 14:03:10)

I'm not entirely sure at all but this is what they say

Note: Even though there are bots that don’t require FPSE on your server (because FrontPage and Expression Web contained an embedded version of FPSE), bots as a whole have significant issues and, for reasons that will be explained below, we are deprecating them.

...so it does suggest that and from the comments on the blog there.

Andy



caz -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/6/2006 15:58:51)

Digging around in some of the comments there I found a link to this blog - why can't MS just put it all together [:@]

More about includes

quote:

There has been quite a bit of discussion about our last blog post, so I wanted to take a few minutes to respond to some of the persistent themes found in people’s comments. Specifically, I wanted to address the following two concerns:

1. That Includes should not have been removed along with the rest of the bot functionality.
2. That Page Transitions should have been removed.

First, let’s talk about Includes. When we first planned to remove bots, we knew that customers would find some pieces of functionality missing that they would want put back into the product (though not necessarily in the same form). Our plan has been that some of these components (for example Includes and the Photo Gallery) would be seen again in future releases of the product, though after redesigns that gave them additional functionality and/or made them more designer-friendly (in other words, fixing the issues that caused us to remove the features in the first place.

We agree, though, that this may not be enough in the case of Includes, since:

1. They are already standards-compliant
2. They do not require FPSE to be used correctly
3. They are extremely useful for keeping large sites maintainable.

For this reason, we will be providing an Add-In after RTM that re-enables the ability to insert new Includes in Expression Web. In the mean time you can use Cheryl Wise’s snippet-based workaround for adding Includes, which can be found at http://by-expression.com/quick-bits/includes/index.aspx. Finally, in a future release you should expect to see a version of Include-like functionality re-integrated directly into the product.



Clarified I think - we'll just have to wait. [:D]



Andy from Spain -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/6/2006 16:58:41)

Good find, Caz! The wording is MS-like

quote:

Finally, in a future release you should expect to see a version of Include-like functionality re-integrated directly into the product.

So that's a definite maybe, some time in the future that may provide something similar-like?



caz -> RE: EWD and FP extensions (10/6/2006 18:52:29)

The link for snippet based includes in the quote above should now read includes by snippet.

This is for adding new includes, rather than on pages that already have FP Includes. I guess that we will have to use this rather clunky fix until MS see fit to add it to a future release.



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