Difficulty in switching from FrontPage to Expression?

For those of you designing your own web pages...can any of you relay your experiences in making the switch from the now unsupported Microsoft FrontPage to Expression Web?

I keep hearing you have to make the switch at some point. What's particularly frustrating lately is that my website host (StartLogic) has had increasingly cruddy support for FrontPage publishing. Seems like there are more times lately when I can't publish, than when I can. And, as they and others say, it's only a matter of time before FrontPage isn't supported at all, and website providers won't have FrontPage extensions enabled.

I'm no expert on websites by any measure, but have been doing just fine using FrontPage. I've been reading a bit as I think about making the transition to Expression, and am starting to realize how huge a pain this will potentially be. Font tags and the like, FrontPage "themes" and other formatting are all gone? You go with '.dwt's and cascading style sheets (hope I'm using the right terminology) instead for formating and page templates?

Does that mean long-term, I'm going to have to change all my FrontPage created pages? I have several different FrontPage "themes" I use to keep a consistent look betewen similar pages. As those "themes" aren't going to work the same way now, am I going to have to individually change each web page to the new formatting/template methods?

I have almost 3,000 web pages, and I just want to know what I'm facing with a switch.

Terry,

I changed from FrontPage to Dreamweaver several years ago. After the initial learning curve, I would never go back. I did not use the Frontpage exclusive functions as I wanted my pages to have maximum compatibility. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are a standard web format, not just FrontPage. I have the ability to use them, though I haven't yet. In Dreamweave, you can go into the HTML editing mode and do a replace function over a selected group of pages. This makes changing much easier. You may not have to go into the HMTL section to do this, I have not looked as I find this easy to do. I have not heard of Expression, but I would be surprised if you could not find a book on it either in a book store ar at the library that should answer most of your questions.

As for time, it will take time to update 3000 pages! If Expression is the improvement over FrontPage that Dreamweaver is, you will never regret the change.

The last upgrade of Dreamweaver made me change all the Flash tools I was using. It seems that these were being picked up as potential viruses and being blocked. Even Dreamweaver tried to update them, without success. I ended up getting rid of these fancy elements. Even without changing web programs, changes are happening within the field that will require making wholesale changes to your web.

Good Luck!

I feel your pain Terry, I'm in the same boat - 3,000 plus pages all done in FrontPage. I haven't made the transition to either Expressions or Dreamweaver yet, but will need to soon. I'm dreading it. I did find a forum on Expressions which had a lot of discussion on making the transitions from FrontPage, you can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.expression.discussion&cat=&lang=en&cr=US

Good luck!

Ron

Guys,

I just switched but I've only used Expression for my new sites. I've not upgraded my personal site yet. I'll be totally updating my site so I will be doing a complete rebuild. I love Expression and from what I've read, it's about equal to Dreamweaver. Both have a learning curve!

Terry wrote: "And, as they and others say, it's only a matter of time before FrontPage isn't supported at all, and website providers won't have FrontPage extensions enabled."

Terry, I read on the MS Office website that Office 2003 (which included Frontpage) would be supported until 2014. If you have heard something definitive to the contrary I would appreciate a link to the info.

I cannot imagine that web host support for the FrontPage Extensions would end anytime in the near term, because there is a huge installed base of the FrontPage desktop application and concommitant use of the FrontPage Extensions.

Terry, if you are having trouble using the Publish Website (or FrontPage Web) from within FrontPage, then it is likely that the extensions on your server are corrupted. Ask your webhost to uninstall and then reinstall the extensions. I had a similar problem publishing, and since I can install/enable/disable the extensions through a control panel, I was able to fix it by doing an uninstall/reinstall. You might want to check this out.

I have no plans (currently) to switch to Expression Web, since FrontPage works fine for me.

-PB

Hi Preston,

I too can uninstall and reinstall the extensions myself, through a control panel. I've done so many times, without effect. The only thing that seems to 'fix' things as far as FrontPage publishing goes for me, is to blow away my entire site from the server, and then reload the entire website. Not exactly an ideal solution!!

Microsoft no longer offers updates to the FrontPage Server extensions that webhosts need for Frontpage. As time goes on, that becomes more and more of a problem for webhosts trying to keep those extensions functional. Already, my (cruddy) web provider doesn't support some FrontPage components, such as search boxes, which I removed from my site. They're not the only ones discontinuing support for some of FrontPage's components. I don't think Frontpage Extensions support by web hosts will just totally disappear in the near future, but it will definitely be eroding more and more as time goes on.

Many places strongly recommend starting to make the move away from a reliance on Frontpage. It's not just FrontPage extensions and the like not being updated, it's changing web standards as well. Code produced from FrontPage just isn't as clean and up-to-snuff.

It's also a matter of functionality to me. Yes, there are definitely things I'll miss about FrontPage. However, the separation of style and content that's so key to Expression Web really will make things easier for me in the long run. Only had Expression 5 days now, but really appreciate the use of the dynamic web template (.DWT's) and the ability to make global site changes much easier than I could in Frontpage. I'm just starting to convert my site, and it's not going to be as bad as I thought, thanks to the use of DWT's and external style sheets. Pretty easy once you get a template set up to copy and paste content from my old pages, and it's so much easier for making mass edits to similar pages.

Terry, can you recommend a book or tutorial for use with Expression? Or are you just learning it on your own as you go?

Thanks,
Jenny

Jenny...I'm pretty much just winging it as I go. I already was pretty familiar with HTML code, which really helps. Other than that, it is definitely a different paradigm with regard to designing a web page. Must say the first couple of days last week were pretty darn frustrating, but then things started to click.

I must say it's not as intuitive as FrontPage was for me. Pretty easy once you get your page templates set up, but I admit I had no clue what some of the parameters did when making those...it was alot of trial and error. Somewhere I saw that Expression's online help wasn't that great, and I agree there as well.

Thanks Terry. I really don't know HTML so for me to learn to use Expression I will need serious help. I've seen a couple of books on Amazon and may give them a try.