Does FrontPage mess up JSP code?

[Mickey Segal]

We maintain our Web sites using Microsoft FrontPage. We are thinking of
adding some JSP code to the HTML pages, but people have told us that
FrontPage messes up JSP code or can't display the JSP portions on the Page
Preview. Is this correct? If so, do other Web site programs do a better
job?

 

[Bryce]

We maintain our Web sites using Microsoft FrontPage. We are thinking of
adding some JSP code to the HTML pages, but people have told us that
FrontPage messes up JSP code or can't display the JSP portions on the Page
Preview. Is this correct? If so, do other Web site programs do a better
job?

I'm sure it won't display the JSP portions. Don't know if it will mess
up the JSP code, as I've never used Frontpage.

I personally use Dreamweaver.

 

[Steve Whitlatch]

We maintain our Web sites using Microsoft FrontPage. We are thinking of
adding some JSP code to the HTML pages, but people have told us that
FrontPage messes up JSP code or can't display the JSP portions on the Page
Preview. Is this correct? If so, do other Web site programs do a better
job?

Web pages produced by FrontPage don't even need to have JSP code
in them to seriously fail proper display in Mozilla.

Steve Whitlatch

 

[Mickey Segal]

I'm sure it won't display the JSP portions. Don't know if it will mess
up the JSP code, as I've never used Frontpage.
I personally use Dreamweaver.

Does Dreamweaver MX display the JSP output in the a page view mode?

 

[kaeli]

Does Dreamweaver MX display the JSP output in the a page view mode?

Yes, it does.
FP is a POS. Half the time it creates IE-only code by using MS proprietary
extensions.

--
--
~kaeli~
Punctuation, capitalization, and grammar are your friends,
and will help people think that you aren't such an ignorant
moron, after all.
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/wildAtHeart
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/kaelisSpace

 

[John C. Bollinger]

We maintain our Web sites using Microsoft FrontPage. We are thinking of
adding some JSP code to the HTML pages, but people have told us that
FrontPage messes up JSP code or can't display the JSP portions on the Page
Preview. Is this correct? If so, do other Web site programs do a better
job?

FrontPage trashes even some plain HTML. For instance, we have some
crusty old pages that were generated once upon a time with the help of
some version of Sun's applet converter. The output contains HTML
intended to work with both IE and Netscape 4, which was an interesting
trick. One day the boss called me in to ask why it wasn't working any
more. It seems he had edited it with FrontPage....

I have never actually tried to use FrontPage on a JSP, but I am
confident that if the JSP contains any scriptlet code whatever then
either FrontPage will barf on it or FrontPage will trash it. Same thing
for any JSP directives. EL expressions might or might not make it
through. Standard and custom actions might be OK, but more likely would
be stripped.

Even if FrontPage could be counted on to not trash the page, I would
still ask why you wanted to use it for such a task. FrontPage's main
selling point is WYSIWYG web authoring, but that cannot possibly work
with JSP because a JSP is dynamically executed on the server to produce
HTML (or other output). FrontPage, or any other web authoring tool, can
be used to produce mockups and prototypes from which to build your JSPs,
but for the actual coding and maintenance your best bets are any of the
several text editors that offer context highlighting for JSP code.

The same holds true for PHP code, server-side includes by whatever
mechanism the server in question supports them, and anything else that
is executed on the server. The client can't render it in a WYSIWYG
manner because it runs _on_the_server_ at request time.

JSP is even more so that way. You can't just "add some JSP code to the
HTML pages": you must first convert the HTML pages into JSPs. That is
absolutely trivial, but it implies running them thereafter via a JSP
container instead of serving them directly from your web server
software. The web server and JSP container can be connected so that
they appear seamless, but that requires a bit of configuration.


John Bollinger
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Bryce]

Does Dreamweaver MX display the JSP output in the a page view mode?

Not really. But I have some plugins that will let me view struts and
JSTL tags.
http://www.fwasi.com/products/

 

[Tor Iver Wilhelmsen]

The output contains HTML intended to work with both IE and Netscape
4, which was an interesting trick.

Yes, it contains illegaly formed HTML in the form of OBJECT and EMBED
intertwined. Perhaps FrontPage just tried to correct the HTML?

 

[John C. Bollinger]

Yes, it contains illegaly formed HTML in the form of OBJECT and EMBED
intertwined. Perhaps FrontPage just tried to correct the HTML?

No, the HTML is well-formed, albeit not valid (it uses nonstandard
COMMENT and EMBED tags, a Microsoft and a Netscape extension,
respectively). The basic structure is:

<object ...>
...
params
...
<comment>
<embed ...>
</embed>
</comment>
</object>

To be sure, this construct relies on the idiosynchracies of the IE and
Netscape browsers, but it actually does work: for IE4, IE5, IE6, NS4,
NS6, and Mozilla 1, at least, with the Sun plugin or (where available)
the MS VM. Admittedly, that only covers about 99.5% of browsers in use
today.


FrontPage may indeed have been trying to be "helpful," but it not only
stripped out the COMMENT element and its contents, it also mangled the
PARAM elements that it left behind. Coming back around to the subject
of the thread, then, FrontPage is not very tolerant with respect to the
HTML it handles.


John Bollinger
(e-mail address removed)