Thursday, January 12, 2006
- www.gadgetopia.com/post/4889
The FrontPage Experiment Has Failed | Gadgetopia * * *
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GADGETOPIA
THE FRONTPAGE EXPERIMENT HAS FAILED
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Latest Entries
Can we finally admit that the FrontPage experiment has failed? You
know — the promise that FrontPage will allow novice Web authors
to create and maintain (especially maintain) good, solid Web sites?
Can we finally admit that this just isn't going to happen?
How many people know someone that is maintaining a Web site of
anything beyond trivial complexity in FrontPage? I mean anything
beyond a five-page brochureware site. Anyone?
I've tried on two occasions now to teach a Web novice how to create
decent content with FrontPage. Both attempts have been complete
failures. I found myself the other day outlining a curriculum
entitled "How Not to Screw Yourself with FrontPage," and realizing
that it would be at least a dozen hours of instruction.
The idea of FrontPage, of course, is to make creating Web pages as
simple as writing in Word. However, I find that you end up having to
teach people a lot about how Web authoring works in order for them not
to completely hose a site up in record time.
Here are the biggest things I see happening when letting beginners
run wild with FrontPage:
*
Massive images being pushed to the Web site, and resized in HTML.
No matter how many times you try to teach them the thumbnail system,
they just don't understand. If the image gets smaller in FrontPage,
then it's smaller…right? *
Poor and inconsistent file naming. This isn't technically a
problem, since URLs can be forgiving, but you see spaces,
apostrophes, etc. in URLs. They think they can name files just like
in Windows.
(For some reason, I see a lot of "Christmas Party_files" URLs too
— like they're saving a Web page out of IE, then uploading it.)
*
Fonts, fonts, fonts — where does the compulsion to change
fonts come from? I don't know, but there must be a deep human need
to do this, because most users lunge right for the font box no matter
how many times you tell them not to. *
Zero comprehension of styles. The concept of styles is never
embraced by users in Word either, so this is no surprise. Users will
jump right at the bold, italics, and font sizing buttons to create
their headers. *
Broken hyperlinks. No one runs the link checking reports. *
No use of folders to organize assets. HTML, images —
everything ends up in the root folder. *
No page titles. There are in Google entitled "New Page 1";
entitled "New Page 2." *
Attempts to back out of formatting problems by applying more
formatting. Font not what you want it to be? Then apply another
font over that one so you get nine nested FONT tags.
"CTRL-SHIFT-Z" is your best friend in these cases — clear all
formatting and start over. Regardless, the font dropdown just makes
sense for users because they have no concept of the tag-based HTML in
the background and how it's being affected by what they're doing. *
No understanding of the paragraph (P) vs. line break (BR)
relationship. This is really universal to word processing, so it
needs to be learned across the board. *
Webbot promiscuity. If there's something in FrontPage that promises
to do something cool, they will try it, without fail.
I know what you're saying — "these users need to be trained."
Sure, but I've found that the number of hours spent training them is
really better spent installing a lightweight CMS, or — better
yet — showing them how to use a tool like or .
The fact is that to get someone really proficient in FrontPage so
they can build a good-looking, easily maintained site, you need to
teach them about the basics of Web authoring, CSS, a fair amount of
HTML so they can get themselves out of problems, Web conventions like
file naming, best practices for site management, etc. This is so far
removed from the supposed Nirvana that FrontPage was intended to give
us: simple and effective Web authoring for everyone.
So what's the answer? I don't think it's a more capable tool. is
an amazing piece of work, but that would kill the average newbie if
they tried to build anything with it.
What we need is a Web development tool we can neuter the crap out of
to effectively seal off functions and transfer their administration to
another, more qualified party. Give me a WYSIWYG editor that will let
me control the interface — shutting off formatting tools and
basically leaving the user with a styles dropdown, a hyperlink
button, and maybe an italics button if they promise not to overuse
it. Is this tool?
If you could do this, then you can move a lot of functionaity to
server-side tools that the user can't touch. My method for applying
headers and footers based on URLs that I detailed is good for that.
Yes, I know good sites get built with FrontPage everyday. I've
built several of them over the years. But I know Web development.
And so does the Microsoft FrontPage team, which proudly points out
that the is built and maintained in FrontPage.
This discussion leaves me curious about what percentage of FrontPage
sales are actual, retail sales? It gets bundled with the Office suite
a lot, and Microsoft throws it in with a lot of server software too
— I got FrontPage 2003 with Small Business Server. Thus, I'd
estimate that less than 10% of FrontPage sales are actual,
full-price, retail sales.
I'm sure many will disagree, but I have solid experience that the
idea that you can give new user a copy of FrontPage and a set of
shared borders and think they'll keep a site in shape is somewhat
ridiculous. Deane | January 12, 2006
THIS POST LINKS TO:
The following posts _are linked to_ from this post.
*
I've been toying with an idea lately, and instead of actually doing
it (don't have the time), I'm going to...
_November 23, 2005_
COMMENTS
What we need is a Web development tool we can neuter the crap out
of to effectively seal off functions and transfer their
administration to another, more qualified party.
I can't think of anything more anachronistic than having an
"arbeiter of stylistics & aesthetics" to make sure that the hoi
polloi don't do anything untoward. Poorly designed/maintained
websites are the pink-flamingos-in-the-neighbor's-front-yard of the
21st century.
There must be another windmill at which to tilt…
best, Craig | January 12, 2006 01:18 AM
I can't think of anything more anachronistic than having an
"arbeiter of stylistics & aesthetics" to make sure that the hoi
polloi don't do anything untoward.
True, but the end result is often that the very author that
FrontPage is designed to help is just as unsatisfied with the results
as the visitor (or myself, for that matter).
It's not that authors are having a grand ‘ol time and thinking
that everything is perfect. If that was the case, then you could give
them a copy of FrontPage, send them off, and never hear from them
again.
Invariably, however, they call you, and say…
*"This just doesn't look right…" *"I don't know what I'm
doing wrong, but I can't get this to work.." *"Why does my site look
like crap?" *"FrontPage told me this form would email me stuff, but
I've had it up for three weeks and got nothing…" *"Why does
that one image take two minutes to download? I dragged the little
resizing handle so it got smaller…"
| January 12, 2006 01:28 AM
Remember what Vincent Flanders has preached on this topic:
Frontpage doesn't kill websites, people with Frontpage kill website!
| January 12, 2006 02:04 AM
Frontpage is something I use to lay out a page, then open the
resutling html in notepad or scite and adjust all the html to
something useful and viewable. I tend to use FP to make the table
structures, div sections, and so forth. And I agree, it's woefully
inadequate unless the resulting code is carefully gone over with a
text editor, and that requires html knowledge.
But it's still better (apologies to the gods of open source) than
nvu, which I've been dying to switch to and which I keep ditching
because of those same flaws you mention. | January 12, 2006
02:42 AM
Of the desktop tools I've seen, comes closest to doing this.
CityDesk also addresses the issue that a site is a network of pages,
rather than just a collection of pages.
Then again, great tool though it is, . | January 12, 2006 03:37
AM
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* * * * *
GADGETOPIA
THE FRONTPAGE EXPERIMENT HAS FAILED
Home
Latest Entries
Can we finally admit that the FrontPage experiment has failed? You
know — the promise that FrontPage will allow novice Web authors
to create and maintain (especially maintain) good, solid Web sites?
Can we finally admit that this just isn't going to happen?
How many people know someone that is maintaining a Web site of
anything beyond trivial complexity in FrontPage? I mean anything
beyond a five-page brochureware site. Anyone?
I've tried on two occasions now to teach a Web novice how to create
decent content with FrontPage. Both attempts have been complete
failures. I found myself the other day outlining a curriculum
entitled "How Not to Screw Yourself with FrontPage," and realizing
that it would be at least a dozen hours of instruction.
The idea of FrontPage, of course, is to make creating Web pages as
simple as writing in Word. However, I find that you end up having to
teach people a lot about how Web authoring works in order for them not
to completely hose a site up in record time.
Here are the biggest things I see happening when letting beginners
run wild with FrontPage:
*
Massive images being pushed to the Web site, and resized in HTML.
No matter how many times you try to teach them the thumbnail system,
they just don't understand. If the image gets smaller in FrontPage,
then it's smaller…right? *
Poor and inconsistent file naming. This isn't technically a
problem, since URLs can be forgiving, but you see spaces,
apostrophes, etc. in URLs. They think they can name files just like
in Windows.
(For some reason, I see a lot of "Christmas Party_files" URLs too
— like they're saving a Web page out of IE, then uploading it.)
*
Fonts, fonts, fonts — where does the compulsion to change
fonts come from? I don't know, but there must be a deep human need
to do this, because most users lunge right for the font box no matter
how many times you tell them not to. *
Zero comprehension of styles. The concept of styles is never
embraced by users in Word either, so this is no surprise. Users will
jump right at the bold, italics, and font sizing buttons to create
their headers. *
Broken hyperlinks. No one runs the link checking reports. *
No use of folders to organize assets. HTML, images —
everything ends up in the root folder. *
No page titles. There are in Google entitled "New Page 1";
entitled "New Page 2." *
Attempts to back out of formatting problems by applying more
formatting. Font not what you want it to be? Then apply another
font over that one so you get nine nested FONT tags.
"CTRL-SHIFT-Z" is your best friend in these cases — clear all
formatting and start over. Regardless, the font dropdown just makes
sense for users because they have no concept of the tag-based HTML in
the background and how it's being affected by what they're doing. *
No understanding of the paragraph (P) vs. line break (BR)
relationship. This is really universal to word processing, so it
needs to be learned across the board. *
Webbot promiscuity. If there's something in FrontPage that promises
to do something cool, they will try it, without fail.
I know what you're saying — "these users need to be trained."
Sure, but I've found that the number of hours spent training them is
really better spent installing a lightweight CMS, or — better
yet — showing them how to use a tool like or .
The fact is that to get someone really proficient in FrontPage so
they can build a good-looking, easily maintained site, you need to
teach them about the basics of Web authoring, CSS, a fair amount of
HTML so they can get themselves out of problems, Web conventions like
file naming, best practices for site management, etc. This is so far
removed from the supposed Nirvana that FrontPage was intended to give
us: simple and effective Web authoring for everyone.
So what's the answer? I don't think it's a more capable tool. is
an amazing piece of work, but that would kill the average newbie if
they tried to build anything with it.
What we need is a Web development tool we can neuter the crap out of
to effectively seal off functions and transfer their administration to
another, more qualified party. Give me a WYSIWYG editor that will let
me control the interface — shutting off formatting tools and
basically leaving the user with a styles dropdown, a hyperlink
button, and maybe an italics button if they promise not to overuse
it. Is this tool?
If you could do this, then you can move a lot of functionaity to
server-side tools that the user can't touch. My method for applying
headers and footers based on URLs that I detailed is good for that.
Yes, I know good sites get built with FrontPage everyday. I've
built several of them over the years. But I know Web development.
And so does the Microsoft FrontPage team, which proudly points out
that the is built and maintained in FrontPage.
This discussion leaves me curious about what percentage of FrontPage
sales are actual, retail sales? It gets bundled with the Office suite
a lot, and Microsoft throws it in with a lot of server software too
— I got FrontPage 2003 with Small Business Server. Thus, I'd
estimate that less than 10% of FrontPage sales are actual,
full-price, retail sales.
I'm sure many will disagree, but I have solid experience that the
idea that you can give new user a copy of FrontPage and a set of
shared borders and think they'll keep a site in shape is somewhat
ridiculous. Deane | January 12, 2006
THIS POST LINKS TO:
The following posts _are linked to_ from this post.
*
I've been toying with an idea lately, and instead of actually doing
it (don't have the time), I'm going to...
_November 23, 2005_
COMMENTS
What we need is a Web development tool we can neuter the crap out
of to effectively seal off functions and transfer their
administration to another, more qualified party.
I can't think of anything more anachronistic than having an
"arbeiter of stylistics & aesthetics" to make sure that the hoi
polloi don't do anything untoward. Poorly designed/maintained
websites are the pink-flamingos-in-the-neighbor's-front-yard of the
21st century.
There must be another windmill at which to tilt…
best, Craig | January 12, 2006 01:18 AM
I can't think of anything more anachronistic than having an
"arbeiter of stylistics & aesthetics" to make sure that the hoi
polloi don't do anything untoward.
True, but the end result is often that the very author that
FrontPage is designed to help is just as unsatisfied with the results
as the visitor (or myself, for that matter).
It's not that authors are having a grand ‘ol time and thinking
that everything is perfect. If that was the case, then you could give
them a copy of FrontPage, send them off, and never hear from them
again.
Invariably, however, they call you, and say…
*"This just doesn't look right…" *"I don't know what I'm
doing wrong, but I can't get this to work.." *"Why does my site look
like crap?" *"FrontPage told me this form would email me stuff, but
I've had it up for three weeks and got nothing…" *"Why does
that one image take two minutes to download? I dragged the little
resizing handle so it got smaller…"
| January 12, 2006 01:28 AM
Remember what Vincent Flanders has preached on this topic:
Frontpage doesn't kill websites, people with Frontpage kill website!
| January 12, 2006 02:04 AM
Frontpage is something I use to lay out a page, then open the
resutling html in notepad or scite and adjust all the html to
something useful and viewable. I tend to use FP to make the table
structures, div sections, and so forth. And I agree, it's woefully
inadequate unless the resulting code is carefully gone over with a
text editor, and that requires html knowledge.
But it's still better (apologies to the gods of open source) than
nvu, which I've been dying to switch to and which I keep ditching
because of those same flaws you mention. | January 12, 2006
02:42 AM
Of the desktop tools I've seen, comes closest to doing this.
CityDesk also addresses the issue that a site is a network of pages,
rather than just a collection of pages.
Then again, great tool though it is, . | January 12, 2006 03:37
AM
ADD A COMMENT
Name: URL:
Comment: is enabled in comments. If you have to use HTML, we
allow A HREF, B, BR, P, STRONG, EM, UL, LI, and BLOCKQUOTE.
Comments on this site are subject to our Web
hosting, dedicated servers and Web design services laser toner,
toner cartridges, hp toner, lexmark toner, samsung toner, canon,
toner, epson toner, oki toner, kyocera toner, xerox toner,
remanufactured toner, compatible toner Free 4 room direct tv
deals. no equipment to buy. free fast professional direct tv
installation. this is the best direct tv deal available anywhere.
Learn from the experts with our SEO article.
| |
