easiest program in the world to use. great for quick easy webpages. would
you like some chees with your whine.
It ain't just whine. FontPage OK, assuming that your server(s) are all
IIS, but not really more than OK.
FronPage 2003 can't handle directories for files that start with a ".".
Select a file called .bash_history on the remote website and click the
arrow to transfer it to your local storage place. FP2K3 will tell you
"Server Error: The URL '.bash_history' is invalid. It may refer to a
nonexistant file or folder, or refer to a file for folder that is not in
the current Web." Same thing for a folder that starts with a ".".
Files or folders that start with a "." are fairly common on un*x
systems, and this problem means that you can't just hit the synchronize
button for your Web to update every file that has changed because as
soon as FP2K3 hits on of those names it craps out. You have to go
through and do it manually. Even worse, it means that you can't use
FP2K3 to access & edit the .htaccess file which used to provide
password-based protection on websites (entire folders or just specific
files) in Apache server environments. You can mark local files as "Don't
Publish", but you can't similarly mark remote files to avoid this
problem. Because of this "." limitation alone, FP is pretty much useless
for any uni*x/Apache website environment.
What is even worse, in the Folder List in FP2K3, you can't even create a
file or folder whose name begins with a ".". When you press Enter after
typing in the new name it reverts to "New_Folder" or "new_page_1.txt".
This is especially dumb because with eitehr FAT32 or NTFS file systems
you can have folders or files whose names begin with a ".". So why is FP
limited like this?
Another really dumb thing about FP2K3 is how it "shows" actions in
progress. If you select a while bunch of files and click on the arrow
button to transfer them, the dialog box displays a message like this:
Copying file 'ftp://s94306345.onlinehome.us/camera/Sophie1.html' to
'H:\var\websites\s94306345.onlinehome.us\camera\Sophie1.html'
(Or H:\var\... to ftp://... if you were uploading.) And it _always_
stays on that one file. It _never_ switches to say that it's copying one
of the other files in the list which you selected. Not only that, but
there is no progress meter to show you how far along FP is in the task.
Furthermore, because that dialog is blocking everything else, you can't
work on a different page while waiting for the trasfer to complete.
Because of this inability to transfer things in the background, FP
pretty much takes itself out of the running for use with medium to large
website projects with hundreds or thousands of files where transferring
large groups of them is common place. You'd get more work done with
NotePad and and the command line FTP client.
FP ain't as great as you say it is.
