Integrating Flash and FrontPage

If you opt for a cheap FrontPage hosting plan, there is a great chance that you do not have a lot to work with.  For example, if you have limited bandwidth and disk space in your package, you will not be able to get as creative with your website as you would like.  If you have a Linux-based plan, then you may not be able to utilize FrontPage to its full potential.  Fortunately, there is a way to make the most of your website, especially from a presentation aspect.  All it takes is the use of some inexpensive technologies such as Flash to give your site the visual boost it needs.  Flash is supported in most FrontPage hosting platforms and is generally easy to put into action.

Why Flash?

Now maintained by Adobe, Flash offers a simple way to enhance the look and feel of almost any website.  Because it is compatible with the FrontPage client and most web browsers, you can incorporate Flash just about anywhere in your site for the benefit of your audience. This means you can liven things up with cool features such as recorded presentations, animation or even movies.  While all users do not appreciate Flash, as long as you keep it to a minimum and use the technology properly, you can make your site standout.

Incorporating Flash

One of the best things about Flash is that pre-made content is widely available on the web for you to use.  If you are simply looking for a quick way to add some flair to your website, this could be the route to take.  Adding Flash to a FrontPage site is fast and easy.

- Open your file in the “Design” view and click the page you want Flash inserted in.

- Next, open the Insert menu and select “Web Component” from the list.

- In the “Component Type” list, choose the “Advanced Controls” option.

- Click on “Flash,” hit “Finish,” open the file you want to add and you are done.

It is really that simple.  FrontPage allows you to automatically install Flash files that end in .spl, .swf and .swt extensions.  Acquiring the Flash files and incorporating them into your website is the easiest way to add some pizazz and keep it updated on a regular basis.  What makes Flash and FrontPage such a great match is that it can be inserted into a specific area of the page, or the entire page.  While the latter requires a little more work, it could be worth it if your truly want a visually appealing, eye-catching website.  If you are an inexperienced web designer, Flash could be the easiest and fastest way to improve a FrontPage site that would otherwise be lacking.

Before deciding to integrate Flash with your FrontPage site, it is important to know that your visitors must have the appropriate plugin in order to play the files you have inserted.  While many users already have this plugin in installed, you may want to create a link that directs them to the Adobe website where they can download and install it for free.

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Nov 20, 2009 : FrontPage Hosting No responses yet

Viable Alternatives to FrontPage Hosting

FrontPage is still a very popular design software program.  Therefore, you should have no problem finding a web host that supports it.  However, in 2006, Microsoft decided to discontinue the development of FrontPage, essentially forcing webmasters and designers to seek different options.  The first alternative many take a look at is CMS (content management system) software.  There are currently a number of CMS programs on the market.  Some are commercial products that require a one-time fee, some are hosted services, and others are completely free to use.

Commercial Software

Commercial CMS products are generally designed for enterprise applications and functionality required by large companies.  These programs usually offer the best overall quality because they are well tested and come with premium support and regular updates for as long as the product is under license.  The major downside is that they can be very expensive, some costing thousands of dollars for a single license.

Hosted Software

Hosted CMS solutions make a great alternative for smaller companies.  This type of software is typically offered in the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) cloud computing environment.  Normally subscription-based, these solutions allow you to enjoy a robust CMS with many of the same features geared towards large companies.  The big drawback to a hosted CMS is that the software cannot be customized to suit your personal needs.  It could also turn out be more expensive depending on how long you end up paying for the service.

Free Alternatives

Free CMS software is a popular choice among users of all sorts, businesses included.  Some of the most widely used programs in this category include Joomla, Drupal and Mambo.  These applications are usually open-source, meaning they can be freely distributed and modified.  The best open-source CMS products are backed by active communities that continuously work to enhance the platform.  Many of these programs have come a long way and received dramatic improvement over the years, making them useful for a wide range of purposes.  The most significant benefit of open-source software is that is can be customized to suit your preference through plugins, themes and flexible APIs.  However, because there is generally no official form of support, you may have a difficult time obtaining help when encountering problems.

Conclusion

It has become clear to see that FrontPage and many other desktop HTML editors are quickly being phased out by their more powerful and capable web-based counterparts.  This is what you will get with almost any CMS solution.  When you take a look at how fast technology evolves, the FrontPage client can be considered a dinosaur compared to some of the other web design tools on the market.  While support can still be found on the market, web hosting providers are increasingly removing FrontPage extensions from their feature list due to that fact that Microsoft no longer backs it.  With a good CMS, you can enjoy a reliable alternative that provides you with the same capabilities of FrontPgae and a lot more.

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Nov 17, 2009 : FrontPage Hosting No responses yet

Five Essential Considerations for FrontPage Hosting

FrontPage web hosting is not difficult to find.  Simply go to your preferred search engine and you will likely come across hundreds of sites that can provide this service.  However, there are some key features want to look out for and factors that must be considered before you sign up.

1.) FrontPage Version

The version of FrontPage on your computer is so crucial because the features vary greatly between editions.  For this reason, you need to make sure the service provider offers the extensions that support your particular version of the FrontPage client.

2.) Additional Features

Although FrontPage support might be your main objective, you will need several more features in order to have a great website and presence.  Some features you may want to keep in mind are email accounts, webmail and web stat tools.  While some versions of FrontPage offer the ability to integrate a hit counter, this feature pales in comparison to what you get with a detailed third-party reporting tool.  If you are building a website to sell products or services from, you certainly need to focus on solutions that come with shopping carts, SSL support and other e-commerce features.

3.) Server Resources

The allocation of resources the host provides is also essential when considering FrontPage hosting.  The resources that are of the most importance to you are disk space and bandwidth.  They are so critical because they ultimately determine how large your site can be and the volume of traffic it is able to support.  Some hosts offers disk space and bandwidth in actual measurements.  For example, one company might have a package that supplies 300 GB disk space and 3000 GB bandwidth.  If you go over these allotments, you may be subject to penalties and additional charges.  You also have firms that simply label their packages as “unlimited,” which usually means that you do not have to pay for any overages.  While both scenarios can work out in your favor, it is imperative to access your resource needs in order to prevent problems with your FrontPage site in the future.

4.) Reliability of the Host

There are literally thousands of companies that offer support for FrontPage.  That does not mean are of equal quality.  Although the actual program is native to the Windows environment, it can also be run efficiently on other platforms such as Unix and various distributions of Linux.  Regardless of the operating system, reliability is of the utmost importance.  This is why it is so critical to find out the company’s background and reputation in the business before purchasing service from them.

5.) The Need for FrontPage

Perhaps the most important factor that needs to be considered is whether or not your really need a FrontPage hosting solution.  This is something you need to think about because there are many other tools that can help you accomplish the same goals and a whole lot more.  You should also know that FrontPage is no longer officially supported by Microsoft and considered outdated compared to modern solutions on the market.

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Nov 13, 2009 : FrontPage Hosting No responses yet

Web Design Wars: FrontPage vs. Dreamweaver vs. Expression Web

Web designers have FrontPage to thank for revolutionizing web publishing via the WYSIWYG text editor.  Things have changed drastically since its inception as the web has seen a barrage of new technologies with several other drifting into obscurity.  You probably know that the extremely popular FrontPage client has been discontinued, leaving Adobe Dreamweaver to battle it out with Microsoft’s new web design product, Expression Web.  You can say FrontPage is no longer a contender since it has not received any updates since 2003 and still caters to Internet Explorer 5.0.  IE and the web itself have certainly changed a lot since those updates occurred.

Getting the Most of Both Tools

DreamWeaver is highly regarded as one of the best design tools for just about every project and situation.  In a short amount of time however, Expression Web has proven itself as a worthy competitor.  Although most prefer to choose one or the other, here are reasons why you may want to consider putting both of these tools to work for you based on their strengths and weaknesses:

Extensibility – The Dreamweaver design environment is far more extensible than Expression Web.  In fact, many of the extensions designed for newer versions still work just as well in older versions.  The same cannot be said for Expression Web as most of its extensions must be updated in order to support certain versions.

WYSIWYG – Dreamweaver and Expression Web both have exceptional WYSIWYG design interfaces even though they take different approaches.  Of course, like many such editors, neither display the content exactly how you will see it in a browser, but with all the different browsers and operating systems available today, this is to be expected.  The key is that both are user-friendly and sophisticated with features that allow you to test servers (Dreamweaver) and pages written in ASP.NET or PHP (Expression Web).

Advanced Programming – The area in which Dreamweaver and Expression Web both tower over FrontPage is scripting.  Naturally, Expression Web is an ideal tool for designers who prefer to work with Microsoft technologies such as ASP and ASP.NET while Dreamweaver is better suited for PHP users.  While both offer support for many of the same technologies, they tend to perform better when working with their default language capabilities.

It is difficult to determine a clear-cut winner between Dreamweaver and Expression Web but with FrontPage being shoved out of the picture, you may be forced to pick one in the very near future.  Though incredibly powerful in their own right, one could say that neither is as easy to use as FrontPage since both require you to have a general knowledge of HTML and CSS.  In order to excel with these programs, you need to have a basic understanding of how the web works and the underlying technologies that keep it thriving.  Because neither tool is flawless and has features the other lacks, you may decide to combine their powers and leverage the best of both worlds.   

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Sep 24, 2009 : FrontPage Hosting One response so far

Expression Web vs. FrontPage Hosting

Although FrontPage hosting lives on, the actual FrontPage client program has been phased out by Microsoft’s new web design software, Expression Web.  Despite all the improvements Expression Web has to offer, some of the FrontPage loyalists are reluctant to move on.  Many users are concerned about compatibility as well as the problems this and all the changes will bring forth.  As most of us know, every software product has a lifecycle and FrontPage has seemingly run its course as it is no longer officially supported by Microsoft.  For this reason, if you are still using FrontPage, you might not be getting the most out of your web design projects.

Notable Improvements

Instead of making several much need changes and introducing another version of FrontPage, the Expression Web software was built from the ground up, making it an entirely different product.  And while there are many similarities between the two clients, beneath the surface you will find that these programs are quite distinct.  Expression Web is more of a professional web design tool, doing away with all the bloated code that resulted in FrontPage being heavily criticized by a sizable portion of its user base.  The web bots responsible for writing code to specifically support Internet Explorer are long gone as full support for other major browsers is now offered.  Not only does Expression Web’s default functionality allow you to write valid XHTML, but it also helps you become familiar with the language by highlighting it in comprehensive code view errors, thus making it a very effective learning tool.

Key Differences

Below are some more examples of how FrontPage and Expression Web are vastly different:

Components – Several of the old components found in FrontPage have been eliminated and are not present in Expression Web.  For example, you will not find components for themes, the navigation view, guest book forms or Word Art to name a few.

Validation Tools – Just because you use Web Expression as your design tool, you should not automatically expect that your code will be clean and valid.  However, unlike FrontPage, this software has a few built in tools to help you check on your code and supports the validation tools provided by the W3C.

Compatibility – The Expression Web software is purposely designed to function with backwards compatibility.  What this essentially means is that sites created with the FrontPage client can be imported into the Expression Web environment and work just as fine.  Keep in mind that it does not support the adding of new content to older FrontPage components.

The web hosting market is slowly but surely giving up FrontPage support in favor of Expression Web.  As a webmaster or designer, you should consider doing so as well.  The software is designed to satisfy the latest web standards having cleaner code and being well tested in a number of widely used browsers.   FrontPage hosting still has better support on the market than Expression Web, but that could all change very soon and when it does, your favorite design tool may no longer be an option.

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Sep 21, 2009 : FrontPage Hosting No responses yet