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FrontPage is Microsoft's premiere Web authoring package - and FrontPage
Express is a free, cut-down version of this. FrontPage Express comes
free with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or 5.
FrontPage Express is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Web page
editor, so it's almost as simple as using a word processor.
For making simple pages, it's all you need, and you'll never catch a
glimpse of the underlying HTML unless you want to. However, if you're
going on to dynamic pages with embedded scripts, FrontPage Express
begins to come a little unstuck - all unknown tags appear as yellow
boxes, and it tends to adjust or even delete custom HTML you write into
it. It has also been critisised for using Internet Explorer-only tags
and attributes.
The main advantage of the package, of course, is that whatever you do,
you see it more or less as the browser will, so it's excellent for laying
out your Web site, no matter what you want to do with it in the end. In
fact, mirrormere.com is laid out on FrontPage Express, then moved into
Windows Notepad for page editing.
Of course, it's not the only WYSIWYG Web editor around by far - but it is
free, and out of the free editors it's quite well featured. It hasn't had
any major updates for a long time, though, and is beginning to become a little
out-dated, being based on FrontPage 98 rather than the new FrontPage 2000.
Still, if it's free, it can't hurt to give it a try.
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