Microsoft FrontPage

Microsoft FrontPage (later full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to 2003. A Macintosh version was also released in 1998. Microsoft FrontPage has since been replaced by Microsoft Expression Web and Sharepoint Designer, which were released in December 2006.

History

FrontPage was initially created by the Cambridge, Massachusetts company Vermeer Technologies Incorporated, evidence of which can be easily spotted in filenames and directories prefixed _vti_ in web sites created using FrontPage. Vermeer was acquired by Microsoft in 1996 specifically so that Microsoft could add FrontPage to its product line-up.^[1]

As a WYSIWYG editor, FrontPage is designed to hide the details of pages' HTML code from the user, making it possible for novices to easily create web pages and sites.

FrontPage's initial outing under the Microsoft name came in 1996 with the release of Windows NT 4.0 Server and its constituent web server Internet Information Services 2.0. Bundled on CD with the NT 4.0 Server release, FrontPage 1.1 would run under NT 4.0 (Server or Workstation) or Windows 95, and was aimed at providing server administrators with a tool to deliver rich web and internet content in a package as easy to use as Microsoft Word.

FrontPage used to require a set of server-side plugins originally known as IIS Extensions. The extension set was significantly enhanced for Microsoft inclusion of FrontPage into the Microsoft Office line-up with Office 97 and subsequently renamed FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE). Both sets of extensions needed to be installed on the target web server for its content and publishing features to work. Microsoft offered both Windows and Unix-based versions of FPSE. However, newer versions of FrontPage also support the standard WebDAV protocol for remote web publishing and authoring.^[2]

A version for Mac OS was released in 1998; however, it had fewer features than the Windows product and Microsoft has not updated it since.^[3]

In 2006, Microsoft announced that FrontPage would eventually be superseded by two products.[1] Microsoft SharePoint Designer will allow business professionals to design SharePoint-based applications. Microsoft Expression Web is targeted for web design professionals who create full-blown web sites. Microsoft announced that they would be discontinuing Microsoft FrontPage by December 2006

Features

Some features that are part of the last version of FrontPage include:

• Help navigating through your site, and seeing your file structure and its contents, visually
• Built-in features for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (partial)
• Bundled image editor (Microsoft Image Composer)
• Point-and-click functionality for common tools, like mouseovers, e-mail forms, and hit counts
• Simple to use with previous knowledge of Office products
• Integrated data display with Office products like Access and Excel
• Support for CSS-based themes (like ASP.NET master pages)
• When you change the URL of a page, all the links to that page are dynamically changed
• Task-assignment for team projects
• Content is editable from anywhere with FrontPage (password is needed)
• Support for rich clipboard data import (i.e. copy/pasting data from Internet Explorer into FrontPage 2003 will automatically download media resources such as images and save them locally)
• Built-in support for automated web templates, that include automatically generated multi-level navigation system.
• FrontPage 2003 introduced support for Dreamweaver compatible web templates, dubbed "Dynamic Web Templates".

Criticism

Some criticism of FrontPage include:

• In previous versions, the WYSIWYG mode tended to generate non-validating HTML, resulting in pages that were optimized for Internet Explorer.^{[citation needed]}
• In some cases, HTML that is manually changed in FrontPage's code view can revert back to incorrectly generated markup after making even slight changes in WYSIWYG mode.^{[citation needed]}
• FrontPage is generally not well suited for administering medium to large corporate websites that require database interaction.

Versions

Microsoft FrontPage 2000 in web-authoring mode

Microsoft FrontPage 2002 showing this wikipedia article in Normal view

The last version of FrontPage is Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. Previous versions include:

• Vermeer FrontPage 1.0
• 1995 Microsoft FrontPage 1.1
• 1997 Microsoft FrontPage 97 (version 2)
• 1997 Microsoft FrontPage Express 2.0 (free stripped-down version came with Internet Explorer 4 and 5, and could be found online from numerous shareware websites^[4][5]
• 1998 Microsoft FrontPage for Macintosh 1.0
• 1998 Microsoft FrontPage 98 (version 3)
• 1999 Microsoft FrontPage 2000 (version 9): Included in Office 2000 Premium and Developer editions
• 2001 Microsoft FrontPage 2002 (version 10): Included in Office XP Professional with FrontPage (volume license only), Office XP Professional Special Edition and Office XP Developer edition.
• 2003 Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 (version 11): Not included in any of the Office 2003 editions, sold separately. It was included with Windows Small Business Server 2003.

• Notice: There is no official version 4 to 8, because after FrontPage was included in some Office editions, the FrontPage version numbers followed their Office version numbers. Nonetheless, version numbers may appear in the meta tags of HTML code generated by these versions of FrontPage.