[KLUG Advocacy] Frontpage is the spawn of Satan

Rusty Yonkers advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
Tue, 1 Jun 2004 10:06:10 -0700 (PDT)


> >MS wants it this way.  Open standards are a threat to their
> hegemony.
> >The carrot is for webpage designers (ease of use).

Part of the problem is convincing webpage designers that
cross-platform is something to really worry about.  There needs to be
enough people that will not use the site and enough money lost for
the lack of use to make it painful enough for the designer to really
care.  Most people that use things like Mozilla will just open up IE
for that one page and then go back to the other browser.  If they do
refuse to use IE then they will just go to another site without even
sending an email to the webmaster stating that they have defected.  

> As time goes on, the "ease of use" argument gets weaker. As
> maintenance and
> increased flexibilty in the end product become more important, and
> as more
> choices become available, the grip of products like Frontpage gets
> weaker over
> time.

Well most people do not even know code or the advantages of writing
good code.  They have broadband and they have a really fast computer
and they think that everyone else should have what they have.  They
also don't see coding as easy maintenance.  Most of the time it is
just ignorance .... and they do not want to change from their
ignorance.  They will continue to plow the field with a plow that
does not have a horse hooked to it so to speak.  

I see the same thing with Windows networking management.  They use
batch files and sledgehammers to manage the system and putting stuff
on each computer instead of central administration and using more
robust tools like VBScript (Ok it is not bash but it is way better
than batch files!) to do scripting.  It may take them a day or two to
learn scripting ..... but hey .... they do not have time for that. 
It is sooooooo easy to look like a rocket scientist to Windows raised
network administrators!  

Just as an FYI, I have hand coded almost all of my website.  I have
dreamweaver 4 now and am starting to look at it to see if it would
really be better than hand coding everything.  So far I keep going
back to the code to do tweaks.  I am teaching my kids coding first
before they use something like dreamweaver so that they know what is
going on in the background.  Give me a really nice html editor and I
am happy (and do not have to worry about licensing).  

I use Quanta on Linux.  On Windows I have found AceHTML for an
editor.  It really rocks for a Windows product.  It is basically just
as good as Quanta and it is also free ..... ok they also have a
version that you can pay for but I have not done that yet.  The free
version is really good.  The pay version is something like only $30
if I remember right.  My motto is good software (even commercial)
does not have to be expensive!

And I have always said that Frontpage SUCKS!!!!! The newest versions
are a little better but talk about tons of junk in the page!  Even
the Mozilla graphical editor leaves something to be desired for good
code creation.  It is better than Frontpage but I had to do a bunch
of cleanup to make it easy to edit and then every time I used
composer again it screwed up the code formatting again.

> Here's another question: How many people (Tony, this is for you,
> too) would
> be happy with products like Frontage, Dreamweaver, etc. (as web
> development 
> tools, ignoring the additedly considerable issue Jamie raises here)
> if you
> don't have to look at the resulting code?

Many people would and do.... partly out of ignorance.  The computer
profession is deffinately filled with many ignorant and
unprofessional people!



=====
Russell C. Yonkers Jr. 
CNE, MCP, A+, CCNA, Linux+, Server+, Network+ certified
-----------------------------------------
Currently using SuSE 9, Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and WinXP 
And yes I run a network at home with Linux and Windows servers
See my website http://www.geocities.com/therustycook


	
		
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