Re: Front Page Fussy

[Peter Taylor <sector_five -at- HOTMAIL -dot- COM>]

[snip]
>This seems analogous to using 35 mm cameras. Mine can be used in
automatic mode
>and requires little effort--great for parties and quick shots. Or, I
can set it
>to manual mode, adjust F-stops, add filters, etc--great for artistic
shots.
>Automatic mode takes same very nice snapshots, but it's hard to get the
special
>effects. I need to know more to control it manually, but I like the
results.
>There are times when either automatic or manual will work. There are
other
>times when the choice of setting is obvious.

You've hit the nail on the head for the point I wanted to make. The last
analogy made the point that if you went to the store and bought a hammer
and when you got home and opened the box and it was a screwdriver you'd
be pretty ticked off. The point was that Frontpage performs a function
completely foreign to what it is advertised to do and that's false.

As someone who has written code for many tools the past and is currently
in the process of coding tools, I can tell you without hesitation that
no tool will ever please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Using the
hammer analogy, let's assume I wanted a hammer that was big enough to
nail a piling (ie. a telephone pole)into the ocean floor. I go to the
store and see a box that lists the function of the tool inside as
"hammer". Am I disappointed when I get it home and try to tap that
monstrous piling into the mucky sand with a ten-ounce hammer? Yes! Who's
fault is that? Is it the hammer manufacturer? Should they put a warning
on the label that lists all the acceptable uses of the hammer while
listing all the things in the world that a hammer can't do? Or, is it my
responsibility to do a bit of leg work and find out what a hammer can do
and what type of hammer I need?

FrontPage is designed to meet the needs of a certain segment of
consumers and it does that. My 60 year old Mom uses FrontPage for her
website and she loves it because it does what she needs quickly and
easily and she doesn't have to worry about HTML. If you need a bigger
HTML hammer, they are out there. It's your responsibility to do the
research and find the best tool to do the job.

I find that a lot of people who bash Microsoft do so because a) it's
easy and doing so elevates their knowledge and experience above every
programmer at Microsoft (after all, they don't know what they're doing
there at MSFT, right?)  b) they have never worked in product development
and don't understand how challenging it really is to release a product
that satisfies 100% of users 100% of the time. If you don't like
Microsoft tools, Microsoft provides more than enough information to help
you write your own. As a matter of fact, in the most recent MSDN news
there is an article right on the "front page" titled _Browser Helper
Objects_ which explains how to use the COM interfaces to the Windows
browser objects so you can write your HTML tools.

Look at it this way: You paid around $75-$100 dollars to purchase a tool
that does approximately 75% of what you want it to. It would have cost
you tens of thousands of dollars to develop a similar tool yourself that
does 100% of what you want it to. Possibly you could market the tool and
recoup some of that cash, but you probably don't have the distribution
and sales/marketing unit in place to do that.

If you got this far into my rant, thanks for reading. I've been the
target of many "this tools sucks" flames for tools I've written and I'd
just like to share a little bit of the view from the other side.

Peter Taylor.
Dip. EE Tech.
B.A. Writing

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