Is FrontPage appropriate for professional website production?

[Jack]

I have a developer who insists on building his website by handcoding all of
his HTML. He claims that drag-and-drop products like FrontPage or Visual
Studio.NET are not robust enough for industrial-strength design and that
professionals all hand-code HTML.

Is this accurate? It strikes me as akin to doing application development in
raw assembler rather than a higher-level language.

 

[Tom Pepper Willett]

Your developer is behind the times, living in the past, and refuses to
accept change. He can't bear the thought of somebody being able to build a
professional web site that didn't have to go through the learning process he
did.

That being said, using FP or any other software is like a carpenter and his
tools. A carpenter can have very expensive tools, but they're not worth a
flip if he doesn't use them properly.

IMO.


--
===
Tom "Pepper" Willett
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage
---
About FrontPage 2003:
http://office.microsoft.com/home/office.aspx?assetid=FX01085802
FrontPage 2003 Product Information:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/frontpage/prodinfo/default.mspx
Understanding FrontPage:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/frontpage/
FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions Support Center:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;fp10se
===

 

[chris leeds]

Not only what Tom W. said, consider the extra time it would take to do it
all by hand!

I'm not saying that FrontPage is THE tool for him but there are dev. tools
for virtually every occasion and for the sake of time he should have a
collection he likes for different purposes.

what kind of "industrial strength" web is he making you? is there some kind
of database or server side scripting?

 

[Kevin Spencer]

I mghit add that you can write a .Net web application using nothing but
NotePad and command-line compilers that come bundled with the .Net platform.
It only takes you 10 times as long to do it.

Relying on your software to make you a good developer is a mistake. There
are plenty of people in these newsgroups who are lazy, and want the software
to do everything for them without having to know anything (which is, BTW,
impossible). On the other hand, I don't know of ANY professional developer
who doesn't use software tools to increase productivity. IOW, there are
extremes in both directions. This "developer" sounds like he/she is in one
of them.

Imagine a carpenter who didn't buy productivity tools (table saws or nail
guns, for example). No matter how much he/she knew, it would still take
forever to build a house. Now imagine an amateur who doesn't know anything
about carpentry buying all kinds of tools. No matter how many tools that
person has, he/she will never build a good house.

The balance is, know the technology inside and out, and know how to increase
productivity with good tools.

And fire that developer. ;-)

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.

 

[Jack]

I'm not saying that FrontPage is THE tool for him but there are dev. tools
for virtually every occasion and for the sake of time he should have a
collection he likes for different purposes.

His charge was against drag-and-drop editors in general. Claims they
generate too much unnecessary code and the layout cannot be tightly
controlled.

Again, my impression is that this is more habit and resistence to change.

We hired a number of Oracle developers in my previous shop who had always
coded all of their stored procedures, etc. in a text editor. Our standard
was to use modeling tools (Embarcadero). They reisted in the beginning and
hated it... but eventually became very bullish and happy to have been forced
to make the change.

 

[Steve Easton]

His charge was against drag-and-drop editors in general. Claims they

generate too much unnecessary code and the layout cannot be tightly
controlled.

Some of the older ones maybe.
Newer ones, no. Providing that the developer knows what they're doing.

I hope this person doesn't get paid by the hour.

--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed............
........................with a computer

 

[Mike Mueller]

Your developer sounds old-school to me. His advantage is he
will know what code is where and what it should do. His
disadvantage is time, and he may not know of everyhting that
can be done with todays web specs.

I prefer to use tools such as FP and its various plug-ins. I
have a year of experience with doing a website on the side
and can awe the people the site represents. I have done
some of my own scripts using Notepad, and I probably could
do a page in it. However, I haven't seen any plug-ins for
Notepad lately.

Mike


Jack wrote:
: I have a developer who insists on building his website by
: handcoding all of his HTML. He claims that drag-and-drop
: products like FrontPage or Visual Studio.NET are not
: robust enough for industrial-strength design and that
: professionals all hand-code HTML.
:
: Is this accurate? It strikes me as akin to doing
: application development in raw assembler rather than a
: higher-level language.

 

[Jack]

However, I haven't seen any plug-ins for

There may be a market opportunity here.