FrontPage and Dreamweaver are two most popular WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editors. There are two different schools of thoughts about which editor should occupy the top slot. Here is a brief overview about both these editors that will make it easier for you to make a call.
FrontPage, a Microsoft product is built on top of its highly popular and successful Microsoft Office suite. It provides a very similar look as that of Microsoft Word and other Office suite based programs. FrontPage is good for non technical and for those accustomed to use Windows Office suite. The user of Office suite will appreciate its easy-to-use menu and close resemblance with MS Word program. The process of inserting images, tables and formatting text is same as those being used with MS Word. It has a big and useful ready to use templates. FrontPage, being a Microsoft product, is good when ASP script is used for coding.
However, FrontPage’s easy and simple use leads to unwanted coding. It has legacy of its association with Internet Explorer (I.E.) and is not in full compliance with World Wide Web Standards. Thus web pages though displayed correct in I.E. but often get out of sync when used in other web browsing software say with Mozilla Firefox. It also requires FrontPage extension at server for proper function of some of its features.
Dreamweaver on the other hand is a Macromedia products specifically developed for web designing purpose. It has now becoming an industry standard in the arena of web editing. Dreamweaver is effectively built having a good mix of advanced tools mixed with a nice graphical user interface environment. It is a part of the Macromedia Studio suite; however, its integration with other Studio application is excellent. It also provides effortless switching from Dreamweaver to other application such as Fireworks, Flash and ColdFusion and thus saves time. Dreamweaver also facilitates building of custom templates; multiple changes in pages through one single change that is one can edit many pages on website with a single mouse click. It has a great collection of database utilities for easy and quick creation of dynamic pages. The advance tool set is extensive and can be used with reasonable ease which makes website maintenance much simpler and effective.
Dreamweaver being a part Macromedia Studio Suite, not as popular as Windows Office suite, at time looks a bit foreign and not vey forthcoming for new user. It requires a bit of experience to use it and comes a bit costlier than FrontPage.
So, if one compare as to which software is suitable for him, certainly it is the Dreamweaver. The Dreamweaver is having a clear edge as far as designing of web pages and its maintenance is concerned and that to with ease and professionalism as cleaner HTML coded pages are obtained when created through Dreamweaver and pages displayed perfect in Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera web browsers. However, few may prefer FrontPage mainly because of popularity and wide deployment of Microsoft Office suite. The association of FrontPage with Microsoft Office suite makes the FrontPage comfortable to work with.
