Why shouldn't I use Frontpage?

[Andy Dingley]

I tested your theory out. I went to w3.org and saved their (flawlessly
validating) page on my desk top. I then opened it using FP, made a few
changes, to the text, then saved it. MIRACULUSLY when I validated the
page again it STILL had no errors.

That's not a test.

* It only tested one page, which might not include some of the areas
where FP was known to change code.

* It only tested that the changed page still validated. FP can make
changes that whilst still valid are also unwanted.

 

[Travis Newbury]

That's not a test.

It is all the testing I am about to waste my time on over this retarded
argument... If you (or anyone else) would like to supply an html page
that magically changes when opened and saved with FP then please do.

 

[Joel Shepherd]

That's not a test.

You mean "That's not a test that satisfies my prejudices"?

Sure it's a test. It's repeatable, it's verifiable, it answered a
well-defined question with a yes/no answer: can one edit a valid (and I
believe in this case, non-trivial) web page in FP and have the result be
valid HTML. The answer is yes.

If FP had instead spewed out invalid HTML, I'm quite sure you wouldn't
have objected to the method used to test the theory: right?

It's not an exhaustive test, but if you do any reading outside these
news groups you might notice that most experiments _aren't_. That
doesn't mean "They're not experiments". This particular experiment
doesn't _prove_ FP always preserves valid HTML either, but sadly such
proof may be beyond our grasp, at least as a practical matter.

But it would take _only one_ test to prove that FP sometimes twists
valid into invalid markup. Feel free to demonstrate it.

 

[Joel Shepherd]

Politics: The New Racism.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Sure it's a test. It's repeatable, it's verifiable, it answered a
well-defined question with a yes/no answer:

It didn't answer the question being asked though. The question wasn't,
"Does there exist one valid page which retains validity after FP ?" it
was "Does FP ever change pages?" Although you carefully post a valid
re-hash of Karl Popper, it still doesn't fix FP. This test is just too
narrow in scope to be a valid comparison for the reasonable purposes of
informal dialogue. It's _certainly_ too narrow to be a valid test for a
magazine article review.

But it would take _only one_ test to prove that FP sometimes twists
valid into invalid markup. Feel free to demonstrate it.

Send me a copy of current FP and I'd be interested enough to examine
it. I'm not interested enough to buy one though.

 

[dorayme]

Politics: The New Racism.

Joel, really! I love Travis. Some of my best friends are
low-down, no-good, grasping, unfeeling right-wing characters. I
never discriminate against them.

 

[wayne]

I, personally, have no problem with FP, and have said so elsewhere. In
fact, I added a page to my site because of all the negativity(sp)
produced by some of the posters on this site. (See
http://www.orangefrogproductions.com/ofp2/ofp2o_auth_artlet_webelitistsandrookies.shtml.)

I'm glad to see that others on alt.html don't really have problems with
WYSIWYG editors, as long as you are aware of the items that can get
added into the HTML code that you don't need. FP is my "editor of
choice", though there ARE problems with it. Again, if you know what to
watch for, you can skip it.

You MUST remember, that the "bells and whistles" are FP Extensions, and
not everyone or every browser can (or WANT to) deal with them. I also
don't agree that you cannot use FP if you are writing a "professional"
site. You cannot do some of the things in the site without adding some
type of scripting, or actually editing the HTML, but FP can be used to
give you basics. You MUST be willing to actually look at, learn and
edit the HTML, directly (Source mode in FP), or even in a text editor
if FP refuses to do it, but there are literally THOUSANDS of sites out
there where you can find what you need/want to do.

If you're comfortable with FP, and don't use their extensions (that
goes for almost ANY WYSIWYG), then there should be no problem, even
from the "standards" bearers. ;-)

BigDaddyBS (Bill S.)

PS: If you have constructive comments about the page I wrote, let me
know.

At 1280 px width, there is a very short horizontal scroll at the bottom
of my screen. When resizing to 800X600 resolution, there is still a
very short scroll bar, but in both cases the text goes off the screen on
the right. Perhaps you should remove "overflow:hidden;" from your
stylesheet.

--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.us
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes religion.
—Steven Weinberg

 

[wayne]

You are starting your argument with the assumption that FP is an
inferior tool, then using that assumption to prove your point that it
is an inferior tool.

Are you a liberal?

Yes, are you one of those asshole republicans?

--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.us
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes religion.
—Steven Weinberg

 

[Joe (GKF)]

On 4 Oct 2006 02:33:51 -0700, bigdaddybs wrote:


At last a sensible reply.

umm, sorry you didn't consider mine a sensible reply.

HOWEVER that was not my original question which was: what harm can it do to
use the non-standard tricks in FP? Is the worst thing that they won't behave
correctly in all browser or is it more serious than that?

Never mind. If "not behaving correctly in all browsers" does not seem
like a serious problem to you, by all means use them. It's your site
after all.

 

[Andy Dingley]

HOWEVER that was not my original question which was: what harm can it do to
use the non-standard tricks in FP?

Are you making a web site, or a M$oft site ?

Is the worst thing that they won't behave
correctly in all browser or is it more serious than that?

It's not a question of "correctly" it's a question of "fail to work at
all".

 

[Richard]

umm, sorry you didn't consider mine a sensible reply.
Never mind. If "not behaving correctly in all browsers" does not seem
like a serious problem to you, by all means use them. It's your site
after all.

Frontpage has compatibility settings anyway.

The biggest issue might be bloated HTML which will cause you issues
later if you wish to switch to a new platform which does not run
frontpage. Your frontpage generated HTML will be almost unreadable and
about 20 times bigger than it should be.

Fine for prototyping but a manual cleanup is a good idea.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Yes, are you one of those asshole republicans?

Why do you have to call me an asshole republican? Can't you just say
Republican or conservitive? Why do you feel the need to add "asshole"?
did I ask if you were a goat smelling dirty sanchez loving liberal?
No, I didn't.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Why do you have to call me an asshole republican? Can't you just say
Republican or conservitive? Why do you feel the need to add "asshole"?

You're right, tautology is a terrible waste.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Talbot?=]

Jim Scott wrote :

When made my first website I used MS Publisher. Although I learned later that the
resulting HTML was mucky and bloated, it taught me the fundementals.
My next pc came with MS Frontpage and although it produced quite nice webpages, my
provider at that time did not support FP extensions.
My site was criticised by the purists on alt.html, so I abandoned FP for a time and
produced my site using various other editors, each time validating every page with W3C.

Well, that is the correct thing to do no matter which tool you use to
create, edit and publish your webpages: validating markup code and
validation CSS code.

Using Web Standards in Your Web Pages: 2 risks regarding editing with a
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get HTML editor
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html#tworiskswithwysiwyg

Although it uses frames a lot and tables extensively I have not changed it for a good
while.

Frames hurt accessibility, usability and searchability of webpages: this
is a well-knwon. And table design increase the accessibility burden (for
mobile devices) and increase file size of webpages. Table design
decrease overall quality of webpage.

Table-based webpage design versus CSS-based webpage design: resources
http://www.gtalbot.org/NvuSection/NvuWebDesignTips/TableVsCSSDesign.html

My ISP these days is quite happy with FP extensions and provides me with heaps of
webspace so I can see no good reason why I should not use FP with all its bells and
whistles.
Can you?

FP is a sub-standard tool and will create sub-standard webpages. Here's
one reason which I think is devastatingly strong:

"Microsoft doesn't use FrontPage to create pages on Microsoft.com --
even the pages discussing FrontPage. If Microsoft doesn't use it, why
should you?"

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-web-design-mistakes-in-2004-part2.html

Microsoft created recently Expression Web Designer which will replace
for good and forever FrontPage.

Gérard

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Talbot?=]

Jim Scott a écrit :

When made my first website I used MS Publisher. Although I learned later that the
resulting HTML was mucky and bloated, it taught me the fundementals.
My next pc came with MS Frontpage and although it produced quite nice webpages, my
provider at that time did not support FP extensions.
My site was criticised by the purists on alt.html, so I abandoned FP for a time and
produced my site using various other editors, each time validating every page with W3C.
Although it uses frames a lot and tables extensively I have not changed it for a good
while.
My ISP these days is quite happy with FP extensions and provides me with heaps of
webspace so I can see no good reason why I should not use FP with all its bells and
whistles.
Can you?

I personally recommend you use KompoZer 0.77 with HandCoder 0.3.4. Along
with KompoZer's built-in "Markup cleaner" feature, this is, believe it
or not, what I use to upgrade very messy outdated webpages. It's a
powerful combo of software tools.

KompoZer 0.77:
http://www.kompozer.net/

HandCoder 0.3.4:
http://fabiwan.kenobi.free.fr/HandCoder/

Gérard

 

[wayne]

Why do you have to call me an asshole republican? Can't you just say
Republican or conservitive? Why do you feel the need to add "asshole"?
did I ask if you were a goat smelling dirty sanchez loving liberal?
No, I didn't.

You're correct of course. However, what does the term "liberal" have to
do with ones disapproval of FP?

My opinion is that you use the term "liberal" in a derogatory manner,
sort of like Russ Limbaugh and Shaun Hannity.

--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.us
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes religion.
—Steven Weinberg

 

[Travis Newbury]

You're correct of course. However, what does the term "liberal" have to
do with ones disapproval of FP?

When viewed by somone familiar with my posts it has everything to do
with being a liberal. You aparently are not, so you miss-read what I
meant.

My opinion is that you use the term "liberal" in a derogatory manner,
sort of like Russ Limbaugh and Shaun Hannity.

Liberal IS derogatory. And for Rush? News is entertainment businss.
When one understands that it is easier to separate the chaff from the
wheat.

 

[bigdaddybs]

Hello Bill

First off, I apologize for going OT (Why shouldn't I use FP?), however,
as you can see it is the fault of the writer, and not FP, and I thought
this was something that could help others who will run into the same
situation (and you know there WILL be others.)
...

ince it IS CSS, can anyone tell me which div (outer or inner or both)
should be defined differently and how? My full page div (container) is
defined as 100% wide, and a number of internal divs are defined at 100%
wide (because they are to take up the width allowed by the container.)
Obviously at least one of those is wrong... Instead of trying to come
up with why FP is bad (especially when it wasn't to blame for the
problem), I'm sure you have run up against this before, somewhere...
How 'bout a clue?

A clue or two is all I can offer you because (1) I'm no expert, not
nearly, and (2) your CSS is so convoluted I don't know what all's going
on. Fortunately I can delete vast chunks of it in the Edit CSS function
of FF Web Developer extension, and localize some likely suspects. YOU
will have to check and test and verify the usefulness of these clues.

I notice:
#full-page { position:absolute; top:10px; left:5px; width: 100%; }

If I get rid of the width:100%, the horizontal scroll bar vanishes.
Further, I notice no other effects. I suspect therefore, you don't need
this at all. Or maybe 90% or something would be better.

But just because the scroll bar is gone doesn't mean that the text is
visible; it's still hanging off the right side of the viewport. So look:

#main-page {
margin-left: 130px;
padding: 5px;
width: 100%;
background-color: #f0fff0;
}

Here, you're saying your want the content to be as wide as the viewport
(or wait, I think I mean _containing block_, but in your case I think
it's pretty much the same). But you've also said to start the 100%-wide
block to start 130 pixels to the right (give or take the 5). So it's no
surprise that the right edge is about 130 pixels off to the right.

You might want to adjust the width and/or margin values accordingly.

I am almost certainly overlooking something. With your opaque CSS and my
lack of experience, there's bound to be something else you ought to look
at too. But at the rates I'm charging you, maybe this is good enough. ;-)

Thanks for ANY insight other than "This page sucks!"

Originally, I was trying to modify the three-column layout from A List
Apart's article using the modification the original author made at
http://www.infocraft.com/articles/the_case_of_the_disappearing_column/.
(That setup is for a 3-column page, while mine was to be only two.)
After most of the pages were complete, when I had problems printing, I
asked for possible reasons. From alt.www.webmaster ... ....
So, because of the number of screens and resolutions out there in
"internet-land", and the number of browsers and how they handle the
"box model", preferably without changing the HTML (would like to handle
it in the CSS), how should the main-page div be defined to keep the
writing within those browsers that ?

Well, it took me some time, but I think I found the answer to the
overflowing problem in Firefox while it looked alright in IE6 (don't
complain!): My original CSS for the main formats above looked like
this, based on my attempting to modify the ALA article, above... And it
worked well in IE6 (had forgotten to check in FF - again, sorry):

body [basically defines site font - basic size and color - and
background color/image]

#full-page { position: absolute; top: 10px; left: 5px; /* Container
Position */
width: 100%; }

#main-page { margin-left: 130px; padding: 5px; width: 100%;
background-color: #f0fff0;
/* BG color for wide layering [removed] */ }

#full-sidebar { float: left; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0;
width: 110px; padding: 5px;
text-align: center; z-index: -1; }


/****************************************************************************************/
/* These are supposed to make the two columns the same length. In
some browsers, */
/* there may be a problem in that the full length may appear. */

/****************************************************************************************/

#full-page { overflow: hidden; }
#full-page .column { padding-bottom: 10010px;
margin-bottom: -10000px; }


/****************************************************************************************/
/* Define the general divs sectioning the above containers
[main-page] */

/****************************************************************************************/
#page-top { margin: 0; padding: 0 .5em; width: 100%; text-align:
center; }
#page-content { margin: 0; padding: .5em; width: 100%; }
#page-bottom { margin: 0; padding: .5em; width: 100%; text-align:
center; }

I got into FF and downloaded a number of web-developer tools (figuring
they'd help - and they did), and after a lot of trial and error, had it
working in FF, but then it overflowed in IE (off right of page). More
trial and error, more failure, more getting it working in one and it
failed in the other and vice-versa. I did some searching for a good
2-column format (LS fixed, RS content and fluid) with a container, and
couldn't find any despite hours of searching. I went back to my CSS,
and thought I'd try something. After all my modifications, I was a LOT
leaner than the above, and was playing with the #full-page and
#main-page ids only, dealing with widths.I finally hit upon the
following:

#full-page { width: 100%; margin: 5px; }

#main-page { margin-left: 125px; width: 98%; background-color:
#f0fff0;
/* BG color for wide layering [removed] */ }

#full-page > #main-page { width: auto; }

#full-sidebar { position: absolute; top: 5px; width: 100px;
text-align: center; }


/****************************************************************************************/
/* Define the general divs sectioning the above containers */

/****************************************************************************************/

#page-top { margin: 0; padding: 0 .5em; /* width: 100%; */
text-align: center; }
#page-content { margin: 0; padding: .5em; /* width: 100%; */ }
#page-bottom { margin: 0; padding: .5em; /* width: 100%; */
text-align: center; }

I'm still not quite sure WHY I tried the child-selector (#full-page >
#main-page), or why it works (my assumption is that IE does not see it,
or if it does, it does so incorrectly, so ignores it, therefore uses
the 98% width, while FF sees it and uses the "auto" width. Am I
correct?)

Anyway, I'm including this here for others that may have problems with
this. Since GG (I know... a hated term!) seems to get at least some of
the NGs indexed, maybe it will also become searchable.

If anyone would care to explain why things work now and didn't before
(I'm exhausted from screwing with it!), please do.

Thank you John and Wayne for your comments and suggestions.

Please... Those of you who had problems, see if they still exist...
(See
http://www.orangefrogproductions.com/ofp2/ofp2o_auth_artlet_webelitistsandrookies.shtml
).

Again, I point out that this was NOT FP's fault -- didn't change
anything in the HTML of the page(s) of the site at all -- but my lack
of understanding in setting the DIVs correctly in the CSS.) Should work
fine in both IE6 and FF, now. (No... I did NOT test in other
browsers... Don't have them available. :-} )

BigDaddyBS (Bill S)

 

[wayne]

When viewed by somone familiar with my posts it has everything to do
with being a liberal. You aparently are not, so you miss-read what I
meant.

Perhaps you can enlighten me as to what you meant.

Liberal IS derogatory. And for Rush? News is entertainment businss.
When one understands that it is easier to separate the chaff from the
wheat.

So, if you believe liberal is derogatory, than my original assessment
was correct and did not "mis-read" what you meant?

No, news is not entertainment, nor is Rush entertaining or news.

--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.us
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes religion.
—Steven Weinberg

 

[dorayme]

bigdaddybs wrote:

Please you trim your posts savagely, at least the quoted bits.