If you want to use a WYSIWYG HTML editor then use one that's not going to corrupt your page. There's myriad of free ones out there that will generate cleaner html than front page does.

Even DW needs 3 hours of configuring before it will behave nicely

Goodness me... this thread has taken off since I was last in it, a couple of days ago. So much to comment on and so little time to do it. Perhaps I'll use Frontpage, the "quick and easy" program and get it all done in no time at all.

Believe me people (I say people because I don't know which are ladies and which aren't, so to be PC -that's 'Polictically Correct' - I use the neuter terms... - That's NOT neuterED terms), to a person who is having their first go at a website, even if they are VERY familiar with Word, Excel  and Publisher etc, Frontpage is as daunting as any other HTML program. Yes, it codes badly, actually it code atrociosly, but the SEs don't seem to mind that at the moment. Also, the atrocious coding in a FP built site can be 'validated' and corrected with a few hours of dedicated work, IF the SEs should ever decide to bother about the quality and accuracy of  HTML coding.

You may have guessed it. I use FP. Up till now, because I have found no reason to change. The new program by MS - "Expression" looks good and I'm in the process of finding out how well it does code. I have already found that it is as simple to use as FP, but with some extra features and a better layout (for me, at least). The other thing that many seem to overlook is that it comes with MS Office, a VERY popular ensemble, so it's basically free, if you need Office... (or it comes with a PC package - by the way, PC packages = Madness = overpriced rubbish).

Hands up those who make a full-time income on the Net? I do. I do admittedly work 1 +1/2 days in a Security Monitoring Room (I'm disabled, so I need sedentary work). I do that work for one simple reason. I know I need to earn more than a full-tile income so I can pay off my home and become finacially independent before I may no longer be able to do many things, possibly my ability to type (hence PC work is threatened) as my condition is progressive. Well, anyway, I digress, I earn this full time income and have done for 3 years (and partially prior to that) building websites for my self (many, many websites - for my Affiliate marketing) an now designing and building for others - WITH FRONTPAGE!!.

I can hand code, but I am slow. So it suits me to use FP, even tho' I KNOW it's a long way from satisfactory (let alone good). Like many, I am NO MS fan. I am into Flight Simulation (when I have the time) and they have stuffed up in a big way with some very loudly promoted Sims that ended up being completely useless peices of nothing but trouble, even after patches, fixes, updates and anything else that they thought may work. But, again I digress...

vivid wrote:

If a web developer never ventures outside of the WYSIWYG program to see the vast technologies and trends in use today, they will be left behind simply because the Web will continue to evolve with or without them.

What? Technologies like Flash, which SE robots can't read - really uselful stuff. Using FP isn't going to isolate me from the new developments and different directions things in web design are going...
I still keep well abreast of anything that may effect my activities, be it negative or positive (Not a go at you, vivid - simply my opinion, mate and yours is as valuable as mine ).

In some ways, I think FP is a good way for 'leaners' to kick off their website building activities. With the problems that FP sometimes presents, especially with browser compatability, comes the need to investigate, think, question and  try solutions. All of this promoting a very steep learning curve and an understanding of the intricacies that may not come with a program that does everything perfectly and never causes the user to actually question WHY something is done one way and not another.

(Folds up portable soap box and retires to milling crowd - disguised, of course...)

Wiz 

Not to worry everyone I am not taking anything bad said about FP personally. Just love a good debate.

I also am not aiming any of my comments to any person.
Well, except, now that the honeymoon is over I am a little depressed. some happiness is short lived.

Northie wrote:

My point is this - if FP was any good then many more pros would be using it. If SEO was easy there'd be more millionaires. If there was a quick fix / easy option to making sustainable living from a web business then more people would be succeeding at it.

I am in agreement with you. The best and quickest fix for building a website is to learn the coding. To market it - learn marketing, to optimize it - learn SEO. To quote another phrase.
"Anything valuable gained will come at the cost of work, there are no shortcuts."

I am going to take a leap here and say that if researched most pros handcode from templates they have built. For a design they do not have I believe they just go to a blank page and handcode from scratch. Once learned handcoding is a lot faster than the use of WYSIWYG to design a page layout. Part of knowing HTML is also knowing how tables/divs work.

I have tried several times to use different wysiwg programs, not just FP, trying to save time, everytime I just get lost and end up going back to handcoding entirely. Since I do not use the design side of FP and only handcode I have no problems creating a site that will compete with any program out there.

The biggest thing I see as to why people do such a bash job on FP is because it is so proprietary in its programming.
I do not argue this at all, the consideration of it being a viable html editor is there, just like anything else, you have to learn how to use it.

DW what good is it if you do not learn, notepad - got to learn how, text pad - got to learn, other html editors you still have to learn. My point again is that if a person does not take the time to learn to use the tools they have then none of them are any good.

OK I know that there are some comments made that will excite a couple of you so go ahead I am braced against the wall.
/* raises shield to stop the vegetables */

Wiz, have you got any negative or positive feedback on the page transition that you are currently using?

ColoEagle wrote:

Well, except, now that the honeymoon is over I am a little depressed. some happiness is short lived.

I have tried several times to use different wysiwg programs, not just FP, trying to save time, everytime I just get lost and end up going back to handcoding entirely. Since I do not use the design side of FP and only handcode I have no problems creating a site that will compete with any program out there.

OK I know that there are some comments made that will excite a couple of you so go ahead I am braced against the wall.
/* raises shield to stop the vegetables */

Humph -- just like a blushing Bride ... don't worry; she'll be as good as new by the end of the week ... we do love our veggies in our relationship!

Yes; no matter what HTML Editor you / we / I use, it ultimately will come down to good ol' fashioned hand-coding to make it all work correctly!

useless coding wastes the time for loading and also make the spiders crawl useless stuff to put in their cache.
learn from mistakes (i.e. using fp) that we and many more made and rectify them.

I'm a Frontpage user and have my own criticisms of the software but I find it easy to knock up sites as long as you switch back and forth from design view to code view and edit any uneccessary stuff FP adds in. It's a fairly quick process I find and I challenge anyone who states the ridiculous like it's faster and easier to code by hand using text editors (are you raving mad?)  That's like having a huge list of numbers that need adding up and doing it by hand with a pencil and your ten fingers and toes for help rather than using a spreadsheet app or at least a calculator. Anyway I knocked this site up for a friend in about 8 hours using FP and it's good enough for them www.aepconsultancy.co.uk

wizard of oz writes:

vivid wrote:
If a web developer never ventures outside of the WYSIWYG program to see the vast technologies and trends in use today, they will be left behind simply because the Web will continue to evolve with or without them.

What? Technologies like Flash, which SE robots can't read - really uselful stuff. Using FP isn't going to isolate me from the new developments and different directions things in web design are going...
I still keep well abreast of anything that may effect my activities, be it negative or positive (Not a go at you, vivid - simply my opinion, mate and yours is as valuable as mine ).

Definitely not Flash.  I'm not a fan of Flash at all.  It's cool to look at, but more annoying than anything else, not to mention the multitude of other problems it causes. I was thinking more about  ASP, PHP, database backed websites, CSS standards, etc.  There's lots of technologies that continue to evolve.  Just look at were the Internet is today compared to ten years ago.

Wiz, you're obviously one of those people who do venture outside of the WYSIWYG environment, as stated in your comment about keeping abreast of anything that may effect your activities.  There are many people who don't and it is those who simply use a WYSIWYG and and go no further in their efforts to learn more that I was referring to.

bigduke6uk wrote:

I'm a Frontpage user and have my own criticisms of the software but I find it easy to knock up sites as long as you switch back and forth from design view to code view and edit any uneccessary stuff FP adds in. It's a fairly quick process I find and I challenge anyone who states the ridiculous like it's faster and easier to code by hand using text editors (are you raving mad?)  That's like having a huge list of numbers that need adding up and doing it by hand with a pencil and your ten fingers and toes for help rather than using a spreadsheet app or at least a calculator. Anyway I knocked this site up for a friend in about 8 hours using FP and it's good enough for them www.aepconsultancy.co.uk

LOL -- I'll take that challenge, seeing that it took you 8 hours to do a simple site using MSFP...

Many of us hand-coders have folders with "typical code" -- we just copy/paste on the fly and we're finished; yet, we know how to "control" our site(s) thru hand-coding as we catch any errors immediately, before uploading to the server.

Ohhh -- speaking of CODING ERRORS -- I noticed your 8 hour simple site has the following code errors, that the alleged "wonderful FP" didn't catch......

You have 20 code warnings, of which you've made the most common error, and that's where you didn't start your site off with the required <!DOCTYPE Declaration>.

A DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current markup languages and without one it is impossible to reliably validate a document. The DOCTYPE defines the version of the document like -- HTML 4.0.1, XHTML 1.0, 1.1, ...etc.

Now; here's the rest of your code warnings as put out by MicroSTOOPID FP.........

line 1 column 1 - Warning: missing <!DOCTYPE> declaration

line 45 column 1 - Warning: <div> isn't allowed in <h2> elements

line 45 column 1 - Warning: missing </h2> before <ul>

line 56 column 1 - Warning: discarding unexpected </div>

line 57 column 1 - Warning: discarding unexpected </h2>

line 87 column 4 - Warning: missing <li>

line 87 column 4 - Warning: missing </h3> before <li>

line 93 column 18 - Warning: unescaped & which should be written as &amp;

line 99 column 4 - Warning: discarding unexpected </h3>

line 13 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "topmargin"

line 13 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "leftmargin"

line 13 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "rightmargin"

line 13 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "bottommargin"

line 19 column 1 - Warning: <table> anchor "table1" already defined

line 47 column 1 - Warning: <ul> anchor "navlist" already defined

line 107 column 1 - Warning: <table> anchor "table1" already defined

line 121 column 84 - Warning: <table> anchor "table1" already defined

line 45 column 1 - Warning: trimming empty <h2>

line 87 column 4 - Warning: trimming empty <h3>

line 87 column 4 - Warning: trimming empty <li>

Touche TA,

Not to mention that as handcoders we do not have to rely on any program to tell us how to fit this inside that.

I think I will have to get the timer from the kitchen and place it on my desk ready for the next website idea that comes into mind.

ColoEagle wrote:

Not to mention that as handcoders we do not have to rely on any program to tell us how to fit this inside that.

thats the 100 % benefit of hand coding, now people shud not try to do fp well by giving excuses, i hope they dont.
anyways, you're did a gr8 job TA in challengin essayplant and showin him the most common errors...

I could have swarn I posted this a couple of days ago, but obviously it got lost somewhere (or I forgot to press a button or two - ahhh, the joys of old age.....)

I could have swarn I posted this a couple of days ago, but obviously it got lost somewhere (or I forgot to press a button or two - ahhh, the joys...  what!~!!  wha...who...ahhhgggghh....

Travel wrote:

I could have swarn I posted this a couple of days ago, but obviously it got lost somewhere (or I forgot to press abutton or two - ahhh, the joys of old age.....)

You will be very happy to hear that the new MS 'Expression' program has this as the VERY FIRST piece of code of any and every page you begin:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

Wiz 

ColoEagle wrote:

I am going to take a leap here and say that if researched most pros handcode from templates they have built. For a design they do not have I believe they just go to a blank page and handcode from scratch. Once learned handcoding is a lot faster than the use of WYSIWYG to design a page layout. Part of knowing HTML is also knowing how tables/divs work.

Exactly. Semantic page construction is a big part of accessibility

Although FP and this new Expression thing can read a complex CSS layout they cannot create one in WYSIWYG mode

Wizard of Oz wrote:

Travel wrote:  I could have swarn I posted this a couple of days ago, but obviously it got lost somewhere (or I forgot to press abutton or two - ahhh, the joys of old age.....)

You will be very happy to hear that the new MS 'Expression' program has this as the VERY FIRST piece of code of any and every page you begin:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

You're having way too many pints at night, Wiz -- I never said those words...

It was a joke (a funny ha ha). I thought at least Gypsy would get it. I thought it was pretty obvious - Maybe Oz sense of humor.

The repetition of the same words repeated by me at the beginning was a reference to my  saying - but obviously it got lost somewhere (or I forgot to press a button or two - ahhh, the joys of old age.....)

And THEN.....Again!!! Repeated in the quote, attributed to you!!

The post (about the new Expression headng each new page with a <!DOCTYPE Declaration> was, in fact, in reference to your 'chiding' bigduke6uk, where you said:

You have 20 code warnings, of which you've made the most common error, and that's where you didn't start your site off with the required <!DOCTYPE Declaration>.

A DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current markup languages and without one it is impossible to reliably validate a document. The DOCTYPE defines the version of the document like -- HTML 4.0.1, XHTML 1.0, 1.1, ...etc.

Everybody now.... altogether, laugh at Stephen...... GO!

Easy, Wiz -- I'm an old man; getting me excited like that makes the pacemaker go nuts...

travelagent wrote:

Easy, Wiz -- I'm an old man; getting me excited like that makes the pacemaker go nuts...

LOL