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Web-site editor does more than ever
Microsoft FrontPage 98 is more than just a point release of the Microsoft Office Web-site editor. Microsoft looked closely at the strengths of key competitors such as NetObjects Fusion and HotMetal Pro and listened to enough customer feedback to come up with what is essentially a new product.
FrontPage keeps everything that worked before and adds more. Page layout style editing of tables and frames makes initial page design and construction simpler while still enabling lower-level tweaking and optimizations with FrontPage's HTML editing tools. The tabbed navigation model makes it easy to flip back and forth between the layout and HTML editing views.
One worrisome problem with FrontPage 97 remains and is aggravated in FrontPage 98: FrontPage implements most of the new bells and whistles of Internet Explorer 4.0 and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) Web server, but does little to help you know when you are designing Windows-only features into your site. If you're building a Microsoft-centered intranet site with the latest and greatest clients and servers, you may not care. As a matter of fact, if you can count on IE4 being on the client, you can do some amazing things with dynamic HTML, channels, and VBScript. In many other cases, you may need to install FrontPage components (which otherwise are included with IIS 4.0) on your Web server or design alternate browser interfaces into every page.
FrontPage also adds a set of more than 50 visual themes that provide attractive graphical templates for banners, buttons, backgrounds, fonts, and horizontal rules at the click of a button. For those who are having problems creating an appealing visual style into Web sites, the professionally designed graphics components are welcome.
Microsoft has continually improved FrontPage from its initial form as one of the first integrated page design and site-management tools-although an altogether weak product-into today's power tool.
No other package does so much. Along with the easier-to-use page layout tools and graphical design assistance, FrontPage has the kind of user...