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BobbyDouglas -> reply (1/23/2007 18:16:08)

what do u mean a float code? Are you talking about inserting the float style tag inside of the html as opposed to a css file?



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 18:43:32)

quote:

ORIGINAL: slanoue

No FP themes? Yuk...another reason to hate it.

Suzanne

The FP themes have been done to death and sites using them can be spotted a mile off. EW has some very nice themes of its own except they're called templates.



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 18:45:00)


quote:

ORIGINAL: DebSpecs

Does it automatically generate a "float" code? That's all I care about!

If you need to float stuff left or right then you can. I don't think it sorts out the float errors in older versions of IE though but it should be OK in IE7.



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 18:57:51)

What is a "float code"? That is a new one to me.

Suzanne



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 19:01:59)

There are millions of themes out there..you don't have to use the ones that came with FP that everyone is familiar with. Besides, you can make your own (which I like).

I don't use them much any more on my own professional site, but they come in very handy when you want to put up a page quickly and want it to look nice (especially if you are not good with graphics or site design on your own).

A template is not too different from a theme...

Suzanne



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 19:12:10)

The EW templates are very nice, very modern. Many of the FP themes were a good few years old and beginning to look a bit long in the tooth.

Here's one of the EW themes/templates, straight out of the box, no changes or anything and it validates.

With CSS if you want an image over the right side of the page you float it right and then the text wraps round the left.



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 19:19:03)

But the most recent versions of both Frontpage and Word had templates anyway...so could you use an Expressions template with Frontpage?

Do you have any examples of this floating code thing so I can see what you mean?

Suzanne



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 19:25:44)

Forget Word, if you save Word files as an HTML page you get a pigs ear of gigantic proportions.

Yes you could use FP with the EW templates but as far as I know you can't get the template without EW. You also need to understand the difference between FP and EW. FP produces Microsoft biased code. It's designed to work with IE and if it looks correct in other browsers then that's by coincidence rather than design

EW on the other hand produces compliant code using HTML or XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets. It doesn't give you templates based on tables.

Floats, hang on a mo and I'll find you something.



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 19:29:30)

OK this 5 step tutorial shows you how floats work but remember it's CSS not tables, if you want to use it with FP you need to learn about styles.



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/23/2007 21:04:34)

Yes, I know people who care about "correct" coding and all that will love Expression and that's part of the reason they came up with it. I just don't give a flying fig about that sort of thing. :) I would rather use Frontpage than have to learn all this new crap and lose the things I like about Frontpage (such as being able to edit the title of the page without having to open it or go to the properties, for instance).

And I don't know why they didn't bother to improve some of the things that Frontpage was lacking (such as being able to sort text or table cells alphabetically, which you can do in Word and Excel, but not FP; or exporting multiple files at once...among many things I could name). I would go with Expression if I thought it was an actual useful improvement, but it's not (for me). It's up to each individual user whether they think it's worth it to upgrade or not.

I wonder if many people who care about that coding stuff will care...since the real geeks about it would still eschew any editor over hand-coding.

FYI I use Firefox and my Frontpage-designed site looks fine in it...

Thank you for the example...so what is the advantage of using this float thing over tables?

Suzanne



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/24/2007 5:05:09)

It's not a case of using the float thing over tables. It's a case of using no tables at all. Tables were originally meant for data not layout. CSS takes all the formatting, styling and layout out of your page and puts it in a separate file leaving just the page content. When the page loads the browser sees there's a css file and grabs it to render the page layout. It only has to do that once so subsequent pages load much faster.

It reduces the size of your page and makes it easier for the Search engines to find and index your content because that's all that's in there. Google for example only reads the first 500 words on a page. If those words are all styles and javascript to do your navigation then it never gets to read any content.

There's the added advantage that if you want to change your site layout, tweak colours etc you only have to do it in one place, the css file, instead of every single page of your site.

On top of that it also makes your site more accessible to those with disabilities.

You say your site looks fine in Firefox and in IE6 and IE7? Have you checked it in other browsers such as Safari and Camino on a Mac? You may have struck lucky and got a layout that works fine but we get hundreds of posts on here from people who are not so lucky and the site is a dogs dinner in anything other than IE6. That's why MS have dropped FP. It produces code specifically to work in IE which in version 6 anyway, is known for being the worst browser around.

They have rewritten huge chunks to make IE7 behave better and more like the other compliant browsers. IE8 will be all new and they're working with the Mozilla Foundation which means it will be much more along the lines of Firefox. Many of the FP specials just won't work properly and they were hardly going to shout "oooh look at our brilliant new browser" and then have their own web tool producing code that won't run in it.

Expression Web looks different, much more like Dreamweaver but it has similar functionality to FP in a lot of areas. It just produces compliant code which has the advantages stated above.

The reason most of the pros hand code to a large extent is that we know what we're getting. If there was a piece of software that was completely reliable in WYSIWYG mode then heck, yes we'd all be using that but there isn't one, not even the vaunted Dreamweaver.

You have to remember we do dozens of sites. Each one we do is a mixture of new code specifically for this job plus code we've written for previous sites that we just store as snippets and pull in. We're not reinventing the wheel each time. When you start from that basis, hand coding, especially for someone that knows what they're doing, is faster than using a WYSIWG. Some of the pros on here use FP but they spend most of their time in code view.

You use what suits you and as long as it produces the end result you want then fine. Just be aware that MS will stop support for FP and if you use any of the features that require FPSEs then they are now unsupported and Unix hosts are beginning to remove them from their systems. You may need to have a rethink about some of your content.



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/24/2007 6:12:03)

Thanks for all the info! I will have to look into that floating thing...sounds like a very good idea that I might want to use sometime.

I don't really care if other browsers can see my site as long as most of them do...but I have had it checked in AOL, Mac etc. and I have Mac users who volunteer on my site. That's good enough for me. If they can read the text and use the menu, that's all I really care about.

I do understand that someone who makes sites for other people for a living might be more particular about things. But I have also met a lot of html "snobs" who only want to do hand-coding because of some geek reason, not because of the reasons you mentioned. I think some people do feel that if they are not doing it by hand, they are cheating, or some such nonsense. Maybe they fear that if they use an editor, they will be out of a job. I am just tired of people who volunteer to work for my site and then give me attitude, especially the ones who put down Frontpage.

Ok, enough ranting.

I was an IE user until recently (used to be a Netscape user until they came up with Netscape 6, and 4.5 no longer was capable of viewing most pages)...IE started being very slow last month and crashing a lot, so I switched to IE 7... and it takes forever to load, freezes up...I just got tired of dealing with it, so now I use Firefox.

As for support from Microsoft for Frontpage....puh-leez. Like they ever helped me anyway...
LOL!!

Suzanne



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/24/2007 7:49:56)

quote:

As for support from Microsoft for Frontpage....puh-leez. Like they ever helped me anyway...
LOL!!
I'm going to the UK HQ of MS on Saturday, would you like me to have a word with them. [:D]



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/25/2007 0:21:58)

LOL! Yes, tell them to stop farming out their support to India and stop making their customers pay for support for the products they buy.....OEM or otherwise.

And, oh, yes, tell them to bring back Frontpage, or at least fix it so that with the next version of Expression, you can edit the title of the page like you were able to in Frontpage, and fix it so that you can sort paragraphs or columns alphabetically, and export multiple files at once!

That's about it ;)

Suzanne



Sid -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/26/2007 16:56:07)

The upgrade from Microsoft to Expression is now available for $99.00 from their site. If I upgrade, do I lose Fp2003??? Does it overwrite like past upgrades??
Am I going to lose a lot of the themes, and everything I read about on this thread so far?? If someone has 30 web sites in FP, and upgrades to expression, how does one make that transition?? Any change it leaves FP 2003 and adds Expression? I guess is not.
Thanks



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/26/2007 18:24:44)

No it doesn't overwrite FP. It's not an FP upgrade it's a new product. They're selling it as an upgrade to encourage people to make the switch.

Your FP themes won't work in EW. You will need to keep FP for those sites that use Themes, custom nav bars, forms etc.

You may want to think about making the move though as FP will not be supported for ever and FPSEs are already unsupported and will eventually disappear from hosts. If you start looking at making the switch sooner then you won't have a last minute panic.



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/27/2007 11:36:00)

When you say that you will lose the themes, what exactly do you mean?

Will it erase them or do you just mean that the Expressions menu does not have any way to change or add themes?

Templates sounds pretty similar so I doubt it would be a big deal, either way.

I will give up Frontpage when they pry it from my cold, dead hands...er, computer! (time to make a bumper sticker... :)

I'm only sort of kidding...I don't like Expressions and don't plan to upgrade unless I see that they fixed the things I don't like and gotten rid of a few things I found very annoying.

Suzanne Lanoue
The TV MegaSite
http://tvmegasite.net
suzanne@tvmegasite.net



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/27/2007 12:31:07)

http://blogs.msdn.com/xweb/archive/2006/09/09/747051.aspx

Have a read of this. It explains what MS has done and why.

Effectively, if your site has some of the FP bots in then EW will handle them but you can't add new ones.



slanoue -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (1/27/2007 14:56:19)

Thanks for the info...

I did try the Beta but didn't like it...there are several features that I rely heavily on in Frontpage (not themes) that are gone, and it really ticks me off because there doesn't seem to be any reason for it. And yet they didn't add any of the things that I felt they should add...

So [sm=BangHead.gif]

Suzanne



DebSpecs -> RE: reply (1/31/2007 14:45:58)

I mean insert a float tag so the text can align with the top of a picture, not the bottom of it. I don't know much about creating CSS



DebSpecs -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/3/2007 16:44:11)

Sorry for the slow reply. I forgot to check the 'email reply' box.

The float code (tag) is inside the image tags. It tells the text how to allign in relation to the picture. Specifically here, it's telling the text to line up at the TOP of the picture instead of the bottom of the pic as default

<a href="http://www.debspecs.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=12&Product_ID=5355&CATID=1"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand" alt="High" src="http://www.debspecs.com/debspecs/images/prodimages/ACF8B.gif" border="0" /></a>



GetCalhoun -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/19/2007 16:09:01)

Yesterday, for no apparent reason, I decided to quickly start a download of EW to my laptop, which is more expendable than my sho nuff page making computer, and go for a Sunday afternoon drive. That was about 1PM. After a series of misfortunes involving the .net framework thingy, which I admit, was mostly my fault, I finally got that fixed (After continuous microsoft knowledge basing, uh, that was about 7PM or so and several gray hairs later) and got EW. I studied it for about 10 minutes. Needless to say, my afternoon drive was aborted.
BTW, I have no idea what .net framework does...I just know to never remove it again! Woof! (The instructions say that if you have an early version of .net framework 2, to remove it before installing the newest v2 so EW will work.) I had v1.something. See, I didn't follow instructions much to my deadly peril.

...With that said, which was only a humorous aside, after my 10 minute program scan, it looks like EW works fine with what you already have as long as you don't get fancy. It reads the old directories just like FP. That's nice. I was afraid it was a DW knockoff, and that's why it took me so long to actually take a look at it. Well, it's not. The biggest improvement I can find is that it sorta automates page includes with the template page master page gizmo.
I agree with what I've read here. It's a poorer version of FP for folks who don't do .asp and CSS. The one I can't fathom, and the other doesn't make a whit of sense to me.
What I like about FP is that I can whip out fair good looking whizzywyg pages faster'n than lightning. Touch typing all the way. Why I want something to slow me down for the same gain? I guess if I'm asked to do the next upgrade to the TV Guide site, I might think about checking out EW. See, I've already forgotten what EW stands for. "I don't do acronyms well either."
Norm
<removed sig, please use the sig in your profile>
PS... I came here, as I do when I have FP questions...this time to see where I stand with the guys I respect and depend on. I see we're pretty much on the same FP.



DebSpecs -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/19/2007 16:21:48)

From what I hear, I'm in no rush to switch from FP.



websquad -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/21/2007 12:59:43)

I'm a newbe to "EW" and "Microsoft Expression" and have never used Frontpage. I've been marking up pages in HTML for over 12 years now, and started using CSS shortly after it came out. I never used a WYSIWYG editor before. Been using Photoshop since 3.0 came out, but am not a strong graphics person.

I do have a few questions about Microsoft Expression:

(1) Will it work on any server ... i.e, Linux running Apache?

(2) Do you have to load stuff on the server like Front Page extensions?

(3) Frontpage created a lot of junk on the server, and I've had to come in more than once on a website and clean house ... Does ME create a lot of junk stuff also?

(4) I found Frontpage code weird and redundent ... does ME produce more efficient code?

(5) I enjoy creating web content on a two (19") LCD monitor setup. Does ME support that, or are you limited to one monitor?



BobbyDouglas -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/21/2007 13:13:31)

quote:

(1) Will it work on any server ... i.e, Linux running Apache?

- It will work on any server, however, certain things such as the ASP.net stuff will not work on a server that does not support ASP.net. Right now EW does not support PHP, however, rumor has it that it will (not sure how legit the information is though).

quote:

(2) Do you have to load stuff on the server like Front Page extensions?

- No, the FrontPage Components (forms, counters, site search, etc.) are not included in EW. You are responsible to find/write your own scripts. If you plan to use EW on a linux server that does not have a mod for ASP, then you will need to use PHP, which currently doesn't work with EW.

quote:

(3) Frontpage created a lot of junk on the server, and I've had to come in more than once on a website and clean house ... Does ME create a lot of junk stuff also?

- Nope, EW is much much cleaner.

quote:

(4) I found Frontpage code weird and redundent ... does ME produce more efficient code?

- The EW code is much better. Think of the change from FP 98 to FP 03, and then multiply that by 10, expect much better results from EW.

quote:

(5) I enjoy creating web content on a two (19") LCD monitor setup. Does ME support that, or are you limited to one monitor?

- Are you talking about editing the same page on two monitors? If so I don't think that is possible, however, you should be able to open two instances of EW, and edit different pages.



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/21/2007 13:20:05)

quote:

ORIGINAL: websquad

I do have a few questions about Microsoft Expression:

(1) Will it work on any server ... i.e, Linux running Apache?

I assume you mean will the code it produces run on any server? Yes but there are limits. If you start using the .net functionality such as sharepoint then it won't work on Linux. You'd need to seek out a PHP alternative but that's not hard.

quote:

(2) Do you have to load stuff on the server like Front Page extensions?
No.

quote:

(3) Frontpage created a lot of junk on the server, and I've had to come in more than once on a website and clean house ... Does ME create a lot of junk stuff also?
It depends what you mean by junk. If you're talking about the vti_conf files then yes EW does but nowhere near as many.

quote:

(4) I found Frontpage code weird and redundent ... does ME produce more efficient code?
ME!??? When did rubbish old operating systems come into this? Oh I see the confusion. [:D] Yes FP produced rubbish unless you stayed away from the automatic stuff. Expression Web is much much better. It does have a habit of trying to stick css styles inline with the HTML but that may be down to a setting I had tweaked wrong.

quote:

(5) I enjoy creating web content on a two (19") LCD monitor setup. Does ME support that, or are you limited to one monitor?
You mean EW? [:D] EW has split screen mode the same as FP. If you're on XP then you should be able to use two screens. No idea, I'm not rich enough to have two .




websquad -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/21/2007 16:23:10)

Forgive me, but I'm new to all of this ... does "EW" and "Microsoft Expression" refer to the same product?



BobbyDouglas -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/21/2007 17:15:23)

quote:

ORIGINAL: websquad

Forgive me, but I'm new to all of this ... does "EW" and "Microsoft Expression" refer to the same product?

- Yes.



jaybee -> RE: Keep Using FP or move to EW? (2/21/2007 17:46:15)

OK BD, how did your reply sneak in before mine? It wasn't there when I posted. [&:]

EW is Expression Web which is what it was originally called when this forum was set up. I wouldn't call it ME if I was you. There's likely to be a lot of confusion when people think you're talking about Windows ME.



websquad -> RE: FP vs EW vs MP, ad nausium ... (2/21/2007 18:12:30)

Well, I escaped the ravages of Microsoft Windows/ME, so having been thusly blessed, I though that ME was a good abbreviation for Microsoft Expression .... and I didn't know the history of the product with its earlier name. So for now on, I'll just spell it out - I'm a reasonably good typist anyway. Bottom line ... I got wind of this product from a web page associated with my web server provider, so I'll see what, if any, support the offer for Linux/Apache users .... Thanks for the input, everyone!



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