FrontPage Versus hand coded HTML?

[screaming_banjo]

Hi

I've learned HTML and little bits and pieces of JavaScript etc. I'm far from an expert and often get stuck! However, for the most part I get by pretty well and can write a fairly reasonable site.

In work I have written a little site for the purpose of displaying reports and images, however my boss doesn't want me to be stuck with maintaining it (I don't mind, but he's the boss!!). So he thinks we should have the person that writes the reports maintain it himself. The result is that I've been on a course to learn FrontPage in order to evaluate how worthwhile this may be.

Having been taught it, very quickly - much easier than hand-coding everything! I feel a little cheated at working hard to learn some of the things that I've done (in HTML), when it could've taken 5 minutes in FrontPage!

I accept that FrontPage does seem to stick strange code in sometimes and that several servers don't support FrontPage extensions. However I would be interested to know what people think in terms of hand coding versus WSYWIG editors.

Also I have to produce a feasibility report highlighting any potential problems we may have in using FrontPage, again I don't really feel that I know enough to comment. I think that for the purpose of text based reports with some images it will be fine, but would be grateful if anyone could point out any 'weirdness' that I've not encountered.

I'd be grateful for any opinions on FrontPage/WSYWIG editorrs in general.

Thanks

[Vladdy]

All WYSIWYG editors are bad, but FP is about the worst. When you know what you are doing, nothing beats hand coding in speed and result.

[TomDenver]

If you're going to use WYSIWYG, I recommend Dreamweaver MX 2004. You can download a free 30 day trial at http://www.macromedia.com.

I've never used Frontpage, but I hear it's extremely inferior to Dreamweaver. Plus hey it's Microsoft and they're the devil, or so I hear.

[DaveSW]

If you ever want to do anything more complicated than text with pictures then FP will usually screw you up big time. If you ever added a form for instance, it wants to use it's own routine. It's far easier to use pyro's email script in php (see my sig).

Besides, if all the person wants is text and pictures, 10mins will suffice to enable them to hardcode in html-kit from www.chami.com

All they have to do is File > New and a basic html outline appears. If they want a heading, choose the h1 tag off the drop down tags menu. If they want a paragraph of text, choose p off the drop down tags menu.

If they want an image, choose img off the tags wizard drop down menu, and they can choose the location as well.

You could then create an external stylesheet to control the presentation, add that to the basic template, and they're away. Everything you've mentioned sorted!