In the world of the
Internet, there is the most essential thing which is
the web page. Programmers used to edit their web
pages by normal word editors such as Notepad.After
many years of web authorizing, web pages became more
complex. Therefore, it is too difficult to program
web pages manually using normal word editors because
of using so much graphics. As a result, many
companies provid their own web editors.
The most
popular softwares are Microsoft FrontPage and
Macromedia Dreamweaver. In the web design world,
there are two large groups of web designers, one
of which prefers Microsoft FrontPage and one of
which prefers Macromedia Dreamweaver. In this
debate, there are both advantages and
disadvantages in using these two softwares.
Microsoft Frontpage:
Microsoft
FrontPage:The idea of providing a web editor as
Microsoft FrontPage is to reduce the
difficulties of creating websites. The birthday
of this software which is offered by Vermeer
Technologies, Inc was in 1994. The software was
called "WYSIWYG", What You See Is What You Get.
Then, Microsoft, Corp bought the software rights
and changed the name to Microsoft FrontPage in
1995. After that, Microsoft has made several
updates of the software: version 1.1, version 2,
express 2.0 and so on until Microsoft FrontPage
2003. However, Microsoft this year, 2007 has
stopped offering FrontPage and they created two
kinds of softwares, Microsoft SharePoint
Designer and Microsoft Expression Web.
There are two advantages of using Microsoft
FrontPage. One of them that is the interface of
Microsoft FrontPage is the same as Microsoft
Word. For that reason, people who usually use
Microsoft Word can deal with FrontPage's tools.
Moreover, the software is very easy to use.
Another benefit of using this software is
providing amazing themes with which you can
create very useful website. Therefore, there are
a lot of web buttons, banners, and images in
this software.
On the other hand, there are two disadvantages
of using this program. First, the software
usually put lots of redundant codes in the web
page programming. Your web pages which are
created with Microsoft FrontPage could be
browsed clearly by Microsoft Internet Explorer,
but they couldn't be browsed well by other web
browsers such as Mozilla Firefox. Second, you
need a web server in order to run some dynamic
activities. Joe, in his article "Macromedia
Dreamweaver Vs Microsoft FrontPage" says"
Another small hindrance of Frontage is that you
need a web server that supports FrontPage
extensions to get some features to work."
Macromedia Dreamweaver:
Macromedia Dreamweaver is one of the most
powerful softwares all over the web authorizing
world. Macromedia Corp, which offered Flash and
Fireworks softwares, entered the world of web
development by providing Macromedia Dreamweaver
in 1996. Therefore, Macromedia Corp developed
the "WYSIWYG", What You See Is What You Get, to
create the Dreamweaver software. Since
Macromedia Dreamweaver became the most important
seller of the company, they made a number of
updates for this software: Dreamweaver 2.0,
Dreamweaver 3.0 until Dreamweaver CS3. In fact,
Adobe Corp bought Macromedia Corp in 2006, so
they became one company last year.
There are three advantages of using Macromedia
Dreamweaver. First, the software supports many
kinds of animation such as flash. Furthermore,
there are some great flash buttons that are
offered with Macromedia Dreamweaver. Second, you
can make lots of web templates that you use for
a very huge number of web pages. Third, the
software supports a large group of programming
languages. Therefore, you can create your
website by Active Server Pages (ASP), Extensible
HyperText Markup Language (XHTML), Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS), and PHP: Hypertext
Preprocessor (PHP) … etc.
In contrast, there two disadvantages in using
this software. One of them is the difficulty of
using the software's tools. According to Joe, in
his article "Macromedia Dreamweaver Vs Microsoft
FrontPage" using Macromedia Dreamweaver is not
easy because of lack of the beginner tools.
Therefore, the software's interface has a lot of
complicated tools that deal with a huge number
of features. Another disadvantage of using
Macromedia Dreamweaver is a little more
expensive than Microsoft FrontPage.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the most popular softwares that
create web pages are Microsoft FrontPage and
Macromedia Dreamweaver. Each one has a number of
advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of
Microsoft FrontPage focus on the easiness of
using the program, but disadvantages of that
software focus on programming websites. The
advantages of Macromedia Dreamweaver focus on
how this software is perfect for using the
geatest web graphics. In contrast, the
disadvantages of that software focus on the
difficulty of using the tools and expenses. In
my opinion, I prefer to use Microsoft FrontPage
since I am familiar with Microsoft Office.
Moreover, I have been using Microsoft FrontPage
since 2000. As a result, I have a good
experience of using this software.
