I have a client who uses Front Page. They love it and simply can't get
on with Dreamweaver.  However, as you can imagine, the Front page code
is a nightmare for me to work with using PHP  Also as we are about to
move to a Linux VPS I'd rather not have Front Page extensions on there.

Sorry, hand coding is not an option for them so don't even bother
thinking about it.  But I would like them to be able to use something
similar to Front Page, that would make my life simpler.  I've looked at
the demo for Expression web but on first glance I think this would scare
them to death.

Any ideas?
-- 
Geoff Berrow  0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011
http://slipperyhill.co.uk - http://4theweb.co.uk

Geoff Berrow wrote:
> I have a client who uses Front Page. They love it and simply can't get
> on with Dreamweaver.  However, as you can imagine, the Front page code
> is a nightmare for me to work with using PHP  Also as we are about to
> move to a Linux VPS I'd rather not have Front Page extensions on there.
> 
> Sorry, hand coding is not an option for them so don't even bother
> thinking about it.  But I would like them to be able to use something
> similar to Front Page, that would make my life simpler.  I've looked at
> the demo for Expression web but on first glance I think this would scare
> them to death.
> 
> Any ideas?

Have they looked at Kompozer? http://kompozer.sourceforge.net/
It's free and open source.

Also, what about Contribute? http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/
It's expensive and closed source.

treadmill-- with the great taste of fish wrote:
> Geoff Berrow wrote:
>> I have a client who uses Front Page. They love it and simply can't get
>> on with Dreamweaver.  However, as you can imagine, the Front page code
>> is a nightmare for me to work with using PHP  Also as we are about to
>> move to a Linux VPS I'd rather not have Front Page extensions on there.
>>
>> Sorry, hand coding is not an option for them so don't even bother
>> thinking about it.  But I would like them to be able to use something
>> similar to Front Page, that would make my life simpler.  I've looked at
>> the demo for Expression web but on first glance I think this would scare
>> them to death.
>>
>> Any ideas?
> 
> Have they looked at Kompozer? http://kompozer.sourceforge.net/
> It's free and open source.
> 
> Also, what about Contribute? http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/
> It's expensive and closed source.
> 

Try Serif's WebPlus.  Their other software is excellent, and superb 
value for money, although I've never used WebPlus, so can't comment on 
the code!

http://www.serif.com/webplus/webplusx2/samples/LeisureCentre/index.html

... has a sample site, so should be typical code.  Looks broadly ok, 
although, like FrontPage, there will be temptation to use every 
available bell and whistle, and WebPlus has loads of these - especially 
graphics facilities.

Phil, London

Message-ID: <gcl8hk$edq$1$8302bc10@news.demon.co.uk> from Philip Herlihy
contained the following:

>
>Try Serif's WebPlus.  Their other software is excellent, and superb 
>value for money, although I've never used WebPlus, so can't comment on 
>the code!

Had a copy of that while I was teaching.  TBH I didn't find Serif
products terribly stable.  Agree about the graphics options, far too
much temptation there...
-- 
Geoff Berrow  0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011
http://slipperyhill.co.uk - http://4theweb.co.uk

Message-ID: <48ede3d2$0$8202$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk> from treadmill--
with the great taste of fish contained the following:

>Have they looked at Kompozer? http://kompozer.sourceforge.net/
>It's free and open source.

I'll take a look, thanks.
>
>Also, what about Contribute? http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/
>It's expensive and closed source.

I thought that was an add on to Dreamweaver?
-- 
Geoff Berrow  0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011
http://slipperyhill.co.uk - http://4theweb.co.uk

Geoff Berrow wrote:
>> ... Try Serif's WebPlus.
> Had a copy of that while I was teaching.  TBH I didn't find Serif
> products terribly stable.  Agree about the graphics options, far too
> much temptation there...

I think the problem is, either WYSIWYG in which case the code is likely to 
be dreadful, or else WYG is not WYS and you need a bit of knowledge.  (Or 
can you square that circle by spending enough money on the software, which I 
can't afford to do?)

Kompozer has some good features but it is limited without a bit of HTML/css 
knowledge, also I think it won't reach version 1.0.  I like it but manage to 
crash it too often for it to be the first tool I reach for.  A wonderful new 
product by the last person to work on Kompozer has been promised but shows 
no sign whatever of happening.
-- 
Tony W
My e-mail address has no hyphen
- but please don't use it, reply to the group.

At 10:53:20 on Fri, 10 Oct 2008, Geoff Berrow  
wrote in :

>Message-ID: <48ede3d2$0$8202$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk> from treadmill--
>with the great taste of fish contained the following:

>>Also, what about Contribute? http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/
>>It's expensive and closed source.
>
>I thought that was an add on to Dreamweaver?

No, but it's the same family.  I have several clients who use Contribute 
to do day-to-day updates to their web sites, calling on me only when 
they need something really major done.

The idea is that you set up the templates in Dreamweaver, specifying 
which are editable regions and which are not.  The client then uses 
Contribute to edit the bits they are allowed to access, and is protected 
from touching what they shouldn't (and, in my experience, being told 
this fact makes clients very happy indeed).  Of course, you want the 
site to be fully CSS, so that all the client has to do is specify 
paragraph, list etc. and all the formatting automagically (as far as 
they are concerned!) appears, without their doing anything to it.

Contribute's a bit over £100 plus VAT.  Since VAT is charged at the 
highest rate in the EU, you need to check the all-inclusive price before 
you talk money to the client!  Even better, if they happen to be 
VAT-registered, send them to the Adobe site to buy their own copy, and 
reclaim the VAT.
-- 
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

On Oct 14, 4:20 am, "Tony"  wrote:
> Geoff Berrow wrote:
> >> ... Try Serif's WebPlus.
> > Had a copy of that while I was teaching.  TBH I didn't find Serif
> > products terribly stable.  Agree about the graphics options, far too
> > much temptation there...
>
> I think the problem is, either WYSIWYG in which case the code is likely to
> be dreadful, or else WYG is not WYS and you need a bit of knowledge.  (Or
> can you square that circle by spending enough money on the software, which I
> can't afford to do?)
>
> Kompozer has some good features but it is limited without a bit of HTML/css
> knowledge, also I think it won't reach version 1.0.  I like it but manage to
> crash it too often for it to be the first tool I reach for.  A wonderful new
> product by the last person to work on Kompozer has been promised but shows
> no sign whatever of happening.
Hmm, do you have the latest version of KompoZer, they are up to
version 0.7.10 (20070831)
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

In article <ufEduAvWq58IFwu0@molly.mockford>, Molly Mockford 
 writes

>Contribute's a bit over £100 plus VAT.

Any thoughts on Topstyle 3.5? It seems to be relatively cheap at about 
$80 and appears to be quite versatile.

I currently use Dreamweaver 4 on my desktop, and find its CSS styles 
panel beyond my very basic understanding. Plus the editing dialogue box 
is awkward to use as I can't view any open HTML pages while it's open.

I'd like to work on HTML on my laptop, but with a less complex package 
to use and load (I upgraded through the Dreamweaver versions and now 
require three or four discs and a different code for each one to put it 
on a new machine).

At present I have an old free version of Homesite (4.5, I think - 
between 2002-05 I used this and the next version up to renew content for 
a client's online magazine) and Topstyle Lite 1.5. They're OK, but I'd 
be interested to hear about other experiences of them or 
recommendations.
-- 
congokid
Eating out in London? Read my tips...
http://congokid.com

Chaddy2222 wrote:
> Hmm, do you have the latest version of KompoZer, they are up to
> version 0.7.10 (20070831)
Yes, that's quite old actually, the copyright notice says 2007.  As I said,
I do like it but I would not give it to a novice.  Still YMMV especially if 
you have lots of RAM which my PC doesn't.
-- 
Tony W
My e-mail address has no hyphen
- but please don't use it, reply to the group.

Message-ID: <ufEduAvWq58IFwu0@molly.mockford> from Molly Mockford
contained the following:

>>I thought that was an add on to Dreamweaver?
>
>No, but it's the same family.  I have several clients who use Contribute 
>to do day-to-day updates to their web sites, calling on me only when 
>they need something really major done.
>
>The idea is that you set up the templates in Dreamweaver, specifying 
>which are editable regions and which are not.  The client then uses 
>Contribute to edit the bits they are allowed to access, and is protected 
>from touching what they shouldn't (and, in my experience, being told 
>this fact makes clients very happy indeed). 

It would be nice if my client was like that.  They have been spoiled by
Front Page which, to their eyes, would allow them to move stuff around
and format it any which way they liked.  It does it by making massive
use of inline styles.

As far as they are concerned any arguments I make are esoteric.  Front
Page does what they want to do and nothing else does it quite so well.

So they say.
-- 
Geoff Berrow  0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011
http://slipperyhill.co.uk - http://4theweb.co.uk

At 14:07:18 on Tue, 14 Oct 2008, congokid  wrote 
in :

>Any thoughts on Topstyle 3.5? It seems to be relatively cheap at about 
>$80 and appears to be quite versatile.

I have Topstyle Lite, which I use for formatting my external 
stylesheets.  I like it, but have never felt the urge to upgrade to a 
paid-for version.

>I currently use Dreamweaver 4 on my desktop, and find its CSS styles 
>panel beyond my very basic understanding.

Yes, old versions of DW did not have good CSS integration.  DW MX or DW 
8 are far better at coping with it.
-- 
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

On Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:38:18 +0100, Geoff Berrow
 wrote:

>As far as they are concerned any arguments I make are esoteric.  Front
>Page does what they want to do and nothing else does it quite so well.
>
>So they say.

Have you considered euthanasia?!? ;-)

At 22:38:18 on Tue, 14 Oct 2008, Geoff Berrow  
wrote in :

>Message-ID: <ufEduAvWq58IFwu0@molly.mockford> from Molly Mockford
>contained the following:

>>The idea is that you set up the templates in Dreamweaver, specifying
>>which are editable regions and which are not.  The client then uses
>>Contribute to edit the bits they are allowed to access, and is protected
>>from touching what they shouldn't (and, in my experience, being told
>>this fact makes clients very happy indeed).
>
>It would be nice if my client was like that.  They have been spoiled by
>Front Page which, to their eyes, would allow them to move stuff around
>and format it any which way they liked.  It does it by making massive
>use of inline styles.

Ah, you need to catch your clients when they are young and tender.  I 
have had one client who said they wanted to use FrontPage to maintain 
their site;  I said that in that case it was a waste of time and money 
to take me on to author their site properly in the first place, since FP 
would cock up the code the first time they used it.  (They had FP4.)

I proved this to them, showing them before-and-after code (they didn't 
understand it, but they could see it was different).  They then 
abandoned both FP and any wish to maintain their site themselves, and 
begged me to do it for them instead.

>As far as they are concerned any arguments I make are esoteric.  Front
>Page does what they want to do and nothing else does it quite so well.
>
>So they say.

A degree in psychology does help...
-- 
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

In article <lq$PT+R$OT9IFwFp@molly.mockford>, Molly Mockford 
 writes
>At 14:07:18 on Tue, 14 Oct 2008, congokid  wrote 
>in :
>
>>Any thoughts on Topstyle 3.5? It seems to be relatively cheap at about 
>>$80 and appears to be quite versatile.
>
>I have Topstyle Lite, which I use for formatting my external 
>stylesheets.  I like it, but have never felt the urge to upgrade to a 
>paid-for version.

Thanks Molly. Though the Lite version is just a CSS editing app, the 
latest full version offers HTML and XHTML editing, too, so I'm tempted.

>Yes, old versions of DW did not have good CSS integration.  DW MX or DW 
>8 are far better at coping with it.

I can feel an upgrade coming on - maybe next year.
-- 
congokid
Eating out in London? Read my tips...
http://congokid.com

<uk.net.web.authoring>
<Geoff Berrow>
<Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:31:05 +0100>


> I have a client who uses Front Page. They love it and simply can't get
> on with Dreamweaver.  However, as you can imagine, the Front page code
> is a nightmare for me to work with using PHP  Also as we are about to
> move to a Linux VPS I'd rather not have Front Page extensions on there.
> 
> Sorry, hand coding is not an option for them so don't even bother
> thinking about it.  But I would like them to be able to use something
> similar to Front Page, that would make my life simpler.  I've looked at
> the demo for Expression web but on first glance I think this would scare
> them to death.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 

If they use FP then its assumed they dont do anything fancy .

Why not knock together a small CMS that does exactly what they want or 
in this particular case create webpages so they look and appear like the 
ones they create using FP .

The admin app nav bar options being at the top of the screen - with a 
WYSIWYG webpage display underneath .

The good part about this is that you could gradually add options to the 
app and as such it wouldnt scare them .

Needless to say its only yourself who knows what the numptys webpages 
look like and the above suggestion might be as useful as molly giving 
tips on web design :-)


-- 
www.phpguestbook.co.uk/phpgb
(the best php guestbook on planet earth)