with its WebBot add-ons and LiveWire through its JavaScript support. B
ut the two products are targeted at different users and attack site construction quite differently.
As Microsoft tightens integration with the rest of the Office suite, its FrontPage looks attractive for people who want to use a Web server to store and distribute corporate documents on an intranet. But it is clearly not intended to handle a large and complex site. (It was unable to import the complete BYTE Site.) LiveWire can handle any site, but there's a trade-off: LiveWire is substantially more complex than FrontPage.
Microsoft FrontPage
Advantages:
--
+ Excellent HTML editor
--
+ Great price/performance
Disadvantages:
--
- Limited programmability
--
- Requires server extension
FrontPage Views
FrontPage came originally from Vermeer, a company Microsoft acquired in its ef
forts to catch Netscape. We tested a beta version of FrontPage 1.1, the first version to come out under the Microsoft banner.
FrontPage includes the 32-bit Personal Web Server, but it can support other servers through a mechanism called the FrontPage server extension. An extension for O'Reilly's WebSite ships with the product, and additional extensions should be available by the time you read this. We tested the default Personal Web Server and its default server extension. The other major components are FrontPage Editor, for authoring in HTML, and FrontPage Explorer, for creating a Web site and then analyzing and maintaining the hyperlinks throughout the site.
FrontPage interacts with your site entirely through the server extension and never deals directly with the original HTML files. You edit local copies obtained from the Web server, then save them via the Web server. You can manage a remote Web site over a network or the Internet, which isn't the case with LiveWire.
The Explorer has t
wo panes. The left pane holds a tree of the various pages comprising the Web site (
see the screen
), and the right pane is a graphical representation of the links to and from the selected page. When you double-click on a page in Explorer, it automatically opens the FrontPage Editor.
This editor has a number of useful features. You can create image maps directly without needing an external tool, and if you drag another page from the Explorer onto the page you are editing, the editor automatically creates a hyperlink to that page. The editor supports standard tags such as the creation of bookmark anchors within a page, as well as links to the bookmarks.
The new 1.1 version of the FrontPage Editor has a number of improvements. It now supports table editing, for example, though there is no direct support for Microsoft extensions to HTML such as table-cell background colors. You can include these attributes manually, but they are not displayed correctly in the FrontPage Editor.
Whereas adding unsupported attributes isn't difficult, incorporating entire unsupported HTML tags into your pages can be cumbersome. You can't type in these HTML elements manually because the editor will format them as displayed text. Instead, you must use a mechanism called a WebBot, which gives FrontPage its ability to go beyond creating simple static HTML pages. A variety of WebBots ship with the product.
Using the HTML WebBot, you can add in the HTML coding needed to create an element not supported directly by the FrontPage Editor. But all you see in the editor is the WebBot, not the HTML associated with it; for that, you must edit the properties for the HTML WebBot. In all, this is a tedious way to add plain old HTML text to a page.
WebBots, like the server extensions, are not something you can create with a scripting language. You have to develop them with a separate kit. Several WebBots come with FrontPage, including a handy form WebBot that can store the user's form input to a tex
t file.
BYTE Best: Netscape LiveWire
Advantages:
--
+ Powerful server scripting
--
+ Can manage large Web sites
Disadvantages:
--
- Steep learning curve
--
- Netscape servers only
Playing with LiveWire
We tested the second beta of LiveWire. Netscape is notorious for labeling alpha products as beta. LiveWire did not disabuse us of this notion. We encountered numerous crashes and inconsistent performance from several LiveWire components.
LiveWire has these main components:
SiteManager
, roughly the equivalent of FrontPage Explorer; Navigator Gold 2.0, the HTML-authoring version of the Navigator 2.0 browser; and the LiveWire compiler and server extension. This component compiles server-side JavaScript and runs it on a Netscape Web server. It includes the AppManager to let
you install and control the JavaScript applications.
Unlike FrontPage, LiveWire has to map the file system of the Web site it is managing. Remote administration of a site is still possible, but it isn't as easy as with FrontPage and entails the security risk of advertising the server's file system.
Like FrontPage Explorer, SiteManager has a two-pane interface, but it uses its panes differently. The left pane is essentially a file manager. If you already have a Web site, you have to bring it under management. SiteManager will then display those directories with a little red triangle to differentiate from normal directories. Of course, if you create a site using SiteManager it is automatically under management.
The Web site you're managing can also have a separate deployment directory. This allows you to develop and test your site in one directory, then deploy it in another directory. SiteManager automatically handles link management when deploying to another managed directory.
SiteM
anager's right pane is the property pane, which shows attributes related to the object currently selected in the left pane. For example, if you select an HTML file in one of your managed directories, the property pane displays the links to and from the page, as well as additional site properties. Both panes are tabbed windows, so you can easily view a rich variety of information with minimal mouse clicks.
As an HTML authoring tool, Navigator Gold 2.0 is a disappointment. We use Navigator 2.0 every day, and Gold 2.0 feels like a fairly natural extension of the browser. Even so, it compares poorly to FrontPage Editor. There is no support for table editing, for example. You can import a file with a table and edit the contents of individual cells, but Navigator Gold will not display the table in edit mode--it unrolls the table and displays it as a series of paragraphs. There is also no built-in image map editor, nor is there direct support for creating and manipulating either frames or JavaScript (LiveW
ire's greatest feature).
Only distantly related to Java, JavaScript is Netscape's scripting language. Now, with the LiveWire server extension, it's available on the server as well. JavaScript resides directly inside HTML pages, between the
<server>
and
</server>
tags. You can also use the back-tick (`) character if you need to insert short JavaScript statements inside other HTML tags. The LiveWire package comes with a compiler that precompiles the JavaScript into run-time
.web
files.
The server extension creates a variety of objects as clients hit the server with their requests, and your server-side JavaScript has complete access to these objects. Server-side JavaScript also has access to the server's file system. A program called AppManager lets you install, start, and stop server-based JavaScripts. AppManager fronts through a Web browser interface.
This proliferation of browser-fronted applications is LiveWire's Achilles' heel. You can easily end
up with a half-dozen instances of Navigator running at once--one to edit the HTML, another running AppManager, another viewing the JavaScript being tested, another running the Trace utility that lets you debug your JavaScript, another opened to the LiveWire documentation, and another pointed at the JavaScript documentation. And we were also running the FastTrack server on the same machine.
Microsoft's FrontPage is the
best route
for less-complex Web sites, especially if you use Microsoft Office. It's also best for remote management of a site. LiveWire is adept at creating richer, more interactive content, particularly when you take advantage of server-side JavaScript and use it with database-enabled LiveWire Pro. But only if you're adept at using it.
Product Information
FrontPage......................$149 (introductory)
Microsoft
Redmond, WA
Phone: (206) 882-8080
Internet:
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage
Circle 1088 on Inquiry Card.
Battle of the Web Site Builders
