Product Reviews

This is just one example of how FrontPage gets its users off to an apparently flying start by taking shortcuts that often prove more trouble than they're worth. Ultimately, there's no getting away from it: the final success of your design depends on the code that defines it. In the past, this was where you hit a brick wall with FrontPage, as not only was its code suspect, but there wasn't much you could do about it. But now that's changed, as Microsoft has introduced a whole host of coding features.

To begin with, FrontPage 2003 offers the crucial Split view that simultaneously lets you work on your wysiwyg layout and HTML code. And, as you work in the Code pane, the Autocomplete feature prompts you with a drop-down list of context-sensitive options, including stored snippets, as you type. There's also a new tab in the Find and Replace dialog to let you search based on coding features such as tags and attributes.

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Most welcome of all is the Quick Tag Selector at the top of the page window where you can instantly select any tag or its contents in the tree hierarchy and then remove it, wrap it or edit it.

FrontPage 2003 also takes more account of the quality of your final code. Much of the program's design flexibility, such as the use of themes and the new layout tables, relies on adding FrontPage-specific code to your pages. Now you can strip this unnecessary clutter from your final viewable pages when publishing. Further site-based improvements include a new Remote view that lets you get, put and synchronise your local files with those on the server complete with support for file locking either via WebDAV or LCK files on FTP servers, the latter being particularly useful for workgroup collaboration - a feature FrontPage 2003 prides itself on.

Another major sign that Microsoft has seen the error of its ways, and is moving more into the open mainstream, is that this is the first release that hasn't added more Web Components requiring new and proprietary server extensions. Instead, Microsoft has chosen to add new features through the more standard and open route of JavaScript. Of course, FrontPage users aren't expected to write their own scripts, so Microsoft has followed Macromedia's thinking with its introduction of the new Behaviours task pane. This offers a host of options including scripts for managing sounds, layers, browser detection, image rollovers, drop-down jump menus and control over embedded Flash movies.

FrontPage 2003's more open and standards-based approach to general web publishing is welcome for the average standalone user, but Microsoft also targets its office-based strongholds. For sites hosted on Windows Server 2003 with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services installed, a number of options are opened up, including the ability to set up web logs, issue tracking lists and news and reviews sites with the minimum of fuss.

More importantly, you can build data-driven sites based on XML, Web Services and OLEDB data sources. Once the link is made, you can apply pre-built Data views or you can manually format your data using any of the available tools. If you do, FrontPage 2003 automatically creates a fully editable XSLT transform that will be applied to all your data. This is undoubtedly state-of-the-art power, but it's rather like trying to attach a Formula One engine to a go-kart.

FrontPage 2003 is a major upgrade that finally recognises the importance of coding and open standards. More advanced users won't be tempted by its Dreamweaver-lite functionality, but occasional users will definitely benefit. With prolonged use, you'll still hit a ceiling with FrontPage 2003, but that's a lot better than hitting a brick wall.

PC Pro's full review of the Microsoft Office System