There are two major WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) editors available for beginners. These are: Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. So the question is which one is better?

According to some research and article i read, Well it all depends on your choice..
1. FrontPage as all Microsoft product has so many templates and ready to use solutions that you cannot admit it is easier for beginner to start using FrontPage to build his first website. You can create simple website personal or business with several clicks and all you will need to do next is to enter your text and pictures instead of used by FrontPage by default.

2. The good news is FrontPage html pages look exactly as they appear in MS Explorer and the bad news is that they look perfect ONLY in MS Explorer. However you may program FrontPage to get rid of nasty tags but I believe it requires some hand coding to adjust pages to Netscape or Opera. Another good news for FrontPage users: about 93% of all internet clients use MS Explorer 5 and higher.

3. As Microsoft application FrontPage is better with ASP pages, which are standard for Windows based hosting and windows based programming.

4. MS FrontPage perfectly interacts with other MS Office products. For example you can easily cut and paste some chart from MS Excel into FrontPage working area.

5. By default MS FrontPage uses table with the fixed width and sometimes it can be a problem to make it display tables with percentage width.

Pluses and minuses of Macromedia Dreamweaver:

1. You can build your own templates and use them to edit hundreds of pages of your website with one single click. Although Dreamweaver adds some comment tags to html file to distinguish editable and non-editable areas and I read in one forum that people experience some troubles applying template to more then 700 pages as they ran out of memory but I had never chance to test that either.. Well

2. Pages done with Dreamweaver usually have less trash in coding. They look almost perfect with Netscape, Opera and MS Explorer.

3. Dreamweaver doing amazing thing with SSI files and other server side include technology. Php code looks much nicer however with ASP scripts FrontPage still better.

4. Dreamweaver is much better interacts with other macromedia products.

5. Both editors in most cases display CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) correctly. But if you enter style attribute twice in Dreamweaver for it will definitely ruin your page and you will be able preview your page partly before this error. FrontPage however handles such mistakes easily.



My own idea is that MS FrontPage is ideal for beginners as it provides so much help and templates, then you should move to Dreamweaver when you feel yourself more comfortable with the html code and finally, if you are serious about web design, you should reach the hand coding level as it still best way for coding pages. It gives you the freedom of using tags and styles, as you want them to use.


Okay guys tell me yours what do you use..

I use Dreamweaver !

I prefer Dreamweaver. i cant see myself using that toy called frontpage.

Anyway it depends on ur needs. I use cold fusion technology so Macromedia Dreamweaver is highly useful to me.

I use dreamweaver also, but i am eager to hear more about adobe's web design software since they have acquired macromedia.

Another thing for beginners to consider is the number of free online tutorials available for a given program. At pixel2lifehttp://www.pixel2life.com/, the lion's share of web design resources are for dreamweaver.

thanks for that pixel2life.com link. it is really helpful. nothing can be like dreamweaver. macromedia is always good(only that their deal with adobe may spoil that). Microsoft is nothing but name. (dont misunderstand me windows and ofice series are superb)
but for other programs....they are just struggling to do something. frontpage is for my baby brother.

Dreamweaver being compared to FrontPage is like comparing Word to Notepad. To sum up a simply fair analogy.

As to issues regarding Adobe and Macromedia, I honestly believe that Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia Inc. would not have a profound effect on the performance of Dreamweaver or any of the Macromedia's widely used apps. The same developers who work on the Macromedia Studio design and development would still be there, doing their thing, only that they would be using IDs' with Adobe's logo.

We would see a minimally changed Dreamweaver. Perhaps a different splash screen, some added menu items to reinforce Dreamweaver's integration with other Adobe programs and few other changes.

Slybase, your comments that Windows and Microsoft Office are superb software aren't generally shared by serious computer users, I for one particularly. Windows have come under heavy criticisms of late and Office is simply the most used app of all time, not essentially the greatest anyway, considering OpenOffice.org

I use Dreamweaver and i'am happy with it.

When we had a course in web development we were started on both Frontpage and Dreamweaver but in day 3 of the course we then had to choose which package we become experts in.

I did not think twice in choosing Dreamweaver.

I used to think Frontpage is no a good development tool until i saw some nice works that were done with it. I think a tool is only as good as the user. Frontpage 2003 is a good development tool.

But as for me i use Dreamweaver since it's more easier for me to use.

joftech:

I think a tool is only as good as the user.

U cant enter a car race with volkwagen beetle...no matter how skillful you are as a driver. U'ld loose

Most of the time, I personally use a simple text editor especially when my web pages have scripts to run. Frontpage normally adds unneccesarry codes to your pages and this over time will make your pages load slower. I dont know if dreamweaver does this. My favorite text editor is scite. Its a programmers's note pad and uses colorto highlight coding and its relatively easy to discover errors in your codes.

dreamweaver is cool and frontpage is not an option.

but one could consider eclipse as it is gaining very nice traction.

however, you could hardly build a good web application/site without getting your hands dirty in code. this is where dreamweaver still needs some work. also, it's support for javascript coding is POOR. duh!

LOL , i really laugh at you all whos has down rated the flexibility and power of the most wonderful wisiwig editor (MS FRONTPAGE), gossh the app is so cool. let me break this down, one of the most wonderful thingys about frontpage is its flexibilty in integrating css into your pages, thats a stuff dreamwever had to copy in its version 7, frontpage has a very flexible way of integrating tables into your webpages.. dreamweaver is a little bit shaizty.. you can not but avoid table arrows, sometimes you create stuff using DW, they look well bu by the time you preview, thel look and you wonder where the hell did this space come from.. well i use both tools very very well, but im now more flexible with frontpage (2003) and i only use DW for my applications, the advantage (wich i choose not to call it) of DW over FP is its flexibility with many file extensions (web wise) and ease to create data connections.
As anybody tested DW8 (adobe version[including flash 8 awesome]) its so cool, you can integrate ur xml into your xslt pages with just your mouse and your finger...

well what i do is as simple as it is, i do my designes in FP and do coding in DW, a perfect combo

Used to use both depending on what kind of site I was building, but I haven't done any coding or site design in at least 6 months now...

thank god

Well as for me i use Dreamweaver..

Well, Seuntech, I think that you must understand something very important, which is that nothing is knowledge until it's universally agreed upon.

Dreamweaver is an award-winning industry standard application that has been hailed by web developers the world over as the perfect tool for web design and web applications development. Besides, it was awarded the most innovative application in 2002. It is widely acclaimed as the best and mostly used web-authoring tool for professional web developers and designers.

And so, I can confidently dispel your claim that FP is the best in its genre.

And @ Timmy...you of all people should know better than that, don't you think? To borrow a page out of your book, 'gossh the app is not cool at all.' Not at all.

Farriel:

And @ Timmy...you of all people should know better than that, don't you think? To borrow a page out of your book, 'gossh the app is not cool at all.' Not at all.

common man, haba... av you used frontpage at all ie(2003) if you havent.. please do and let me know what you think. i understand the rashy stuffs and browser wahala's that may come from frontpage.. but you can disable all that. im enjoying my self (living lavida loca) with FP and both are always opened when ever i start my designs.
frontpage makes design flexible at least you use ms-word now. so you should know what i mean

thanks for the contribution boys. you've really taken me to school web designing wise. my site was designed with frontpage. http://traedays.com/

am kinda getting macromedia hard.but i think flash is flash frontpage is it's own thing u cant compare the two.

there are different ways of giving awarding they look at deferent qualities. As you can not compare Microsoft word with any other typing program that is how microsoft frontpage is to dream weaver i use both of them there is no tool that you want from from frontpage that i can not tell you where to locate it even at dream ( if the award is based on physical properties frontpage 2003 will win unless there is something else, you have it in you hand do not let any body Jorge for you unless you do not know how to use it.)

up with 1point there.

Dreamweaver has the edge because they've also got this wide range of development/design tools (flash, shockwave, cold fusion and wotever). They can only get even more popular now they've been taken over by Adobe.
But truth be told, beginner or not, Frontpage is a by far the easier wysiwyg editor to use (of the two) and if you know how to use it well, you can do wonders with it, just as you can with dreamweaver.

I use the superb Dreamweaver!
It's great and easy to use.

The horrible "bloatware" Frontpage uses over 100 lines of code where just 10 will do.
The only thing saving Frontpage is that it's free with MS Office and most businesses start off with it.

Join the campaign to "Stamp out Frontpage" - I'll be leading from the front.

right behind you my brother...

thumbs up for Dreamweaver

There's nothin special about frontpage cos u dont have to learn it to use it. You should just try dreamweaver without experience of it and you'll understand how different they are.

Frontpage is rally good it all depend on how good you are with it. www.firstbanknigeria.com was designed with Frontpage.

Ah, so what's with the First Bank site? It's even drab to me (no pun intended), for a bank like First Bank.

To all you guys in the line of DW, I say, una sabi beta tin. How else can anybody use any other web-authoring tool aside Dreamweaver? If you compare it to GoLive, I wouldn't mind much, but certainly not FrontPage, please. Whether FP 2003 or FP 3002.

lol, font page is not that bad, most company website use it just that it can't be compared to dreamweaver cos it's not as advanced as dreamweaver.

Front is more matured men.

Hmmm, what does the term mature being used in this context mean? That it's been around longer than Dreamweaver, or that it's being used by older people?

Good quetion

Maybe that the interface and features has been simplified to the point were old folks can easily pick up on it?

If you can be productive with Frontpage then have at it, but soon (especially considering that Dreamweaver is an Adobe product now) M$ will slowly be edged out of the market. Hosting services will probably continue to use it as a service to clients, like IX Webhosting, but all in all, M$'s days in this market are numbered... Unless of course they are working on a killer app in conjuection with another well established company ... Or they plan to ship Frontpage 2006 with Windows Vista aka Longwait