Re: Front Page Fussy

["Steven J. Owens" <puff -at- NETCOM -dot- COM>]

Peter,

     Welcome aboard, hope you enjoy the list.  You'll find I don't post
all that often.  Some days this list just has too much traffic.

     Aside: To the person who asked what tool is GOOD to use, try out
DreamWeaver.

No, I don't use it myself - my favorite editor is emacs, an overgrown
lisp interepreter on steroids - but I've heard nothing but good things
about it *and* the code it produces from everyone, including many
developers whom I respect.

Peter Taylor writes:
> If you expect to use FrontPage to do professional work for
> clients...well, that's up to you. It's tough enough to code pages
> that look good on all browsers by hand, let alone using a WYSIWYG
> no-code tool.

     The thing is, Microsoft doesn't pitch FrontPage as an amatuer
tool, they pitch it as a professional tool.  Look at the first
paragraph in the Front Page 98 overview at www.microsoft.com:

     Microsoft FrontPage 98 is a quick, effective way to create and
     manage professional-quality Internet or intranet sites without
     programming. It makes it easy for new users and professional Web
     developers alike to build and maintain great-looking,
     professional-quality Web sites in no time.

     Hence I will judge it by professional standards.  I don't take
this personally, I take it professionally, since it pollutes my career
space with ugly, unmaintainable HTML and pointy-haired bosses who want
to hire somebody for "serious web development" with "FrontPage,
Access, ASP experience."  Bleargh.

> >> I find that a lot of people who bash Microsoft do so because a) it's

     Frankly, I don't bother bashing Microsoft most of the time, I
have far too many more interesting things to do.

> I'm not certain you saw the original message which attributed the
> performance of FrontPage to "Microsoft attitude". That's the point I was
> indirectly addressing so as not to offend the person responsible.

     Well, you offended me anyway :-).  Actually, no, you didn't, but
the clown who posted the immediate followup to my post offends me,
because he completely ignored my words, said they were bullshit and
attributed to me statements which I did not make.

     What do I mean by Microsoft Attitude? Microsoft as a company
seems to consistently display an attitude much similar to good old
IBM, in that no matter how it was being done before they entered the
market, they'll come up with their own somewhat different way of doing
it - usually gratuitously different - and claim it's the standard.  Is
it Microsoft engineering or Microsoft marketing?  I don't really care
which department, the bottom line is that Microsoft as whole does this
and in the process usually gums up the works.

> Like I said, if it's not doing what you want for the price you're
> paying, you are free to develop or pay someone to develop the tool that
> does 100% "right" according to your personal needs. It will probably
> cost you in the order of 1000%-10000% more than the retail product on
> the shelf, but it will do exactly what you want.

     They're also perfectly free to say what they don't like about the
product in a forum intended specifically for the purpose of exchanging
opinions, ideas and advice with other professionals.  The right to
free speech also means the right to criticize and rebut the free
speech of others.

     In an earlier post you wrote:

> 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."

     All too true.  However, judging FrontPage according to the target
audience (of the marketing, at least) it doesn't come near 50%, let
alone 100%.

> 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?

     Let's clarify that example a bit:

     Let's assume I wanted a hammer to nail a telephone pole into the
ocean floor (come to think of it, why would you want to?).

      I go to a store and see a box that describes the tool inside as
"Microsoft Hammer is a quick, effective tool for hammering anything
into anything else.  With Microsoft Hammer you can do
industrial-strength hammering without needing to hire professionals or
get an engineering degree. It makes it easy for new users and
accomplished engineers alike to hamemr things in no time."  I take it
home and try to tap that monstrous piling into the mucky sand with a
ten-ounce hammer.  Am I disappointed?

     Really, though, this analogy fails very quickly; developing web
pages is somewhat more sophisticated than anything you can do with a
hammer or a screwdriver.

> 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?)

     I don't claim to know more or be smarter than the folks at
Microsoft.  That's the point after all; if they were incompetent I
could just assume that's the cause of the flaws in the products, but I
doubt that's the case.  Don't take this personally; my beef is with
Microsoft, the company, not with any particular engineering team,
section, department, etc.

     But I find it interesting that Microsoft defenders (I'll avoid
the more semantically loaded term "apologist") typically respond to
any critique of Microsoft products with claims of bashing.

> 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.

     In point of fact, I have worked in product development and I do
know how challenging it is to release a product that satisfies the
target audience, let alone everybody Marketing thinks could find a use
for the product.

Steven J. Owens
puff -at- netcom -dot- com


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