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Subject:Re: Front Page Fussy From:Tracy Boyington <tracy_boyington -at- OKVOTECH -dot- ORG> Date:Wed, 13 Jan 1999 14:47:11 -0600
> No, she knows what the tool can do and she uses it properly. She doesn't
> want to do anything "fancy" (for lack of a better term). She creates her
> pages to meet the limitations of the tool and it works fine.
What do you consider "fancy" and what do you consider the limitations of
the tool? You didn't answer my question whether you had ever used it,
but since you know its abilities and limitations is it safe to assume
you *have* used it?
> 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.
As someone else mentioned, Microsoft markets FrontPage as a
*professional* web development tool. And your second sentence above
seems to be implying that coding pages that look good on all browsers
should be more difficult with a WYSIWYG tool than by hand? If so, then
what is the purpose of the tool?
> 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.
Apparently not. Thanks for the clarification.
> >The problem is not that FrontPage only does 75% of the job. The problem
> >is that FrontPage does 100% of the job, does about 25% of it wrong
> (more
> >or less, depending on how picky you are) and *doesn't let you know it's
> >been done wrong.* I consider that a failure for any product.
>
> It does 25% of it wrong *in your specific case*. You admit yourself that
> it's more or less than 25% depending on how picky the user is. So what's
> "wrong" for you is "right" for someone else, correct?
My comment about "how picky" means that FP does some things which I
would consider minor annoyances, but would cause others would go
ballistic (this is based on personal experience... when I mentioned some
of what I consider FP's minor annoyances on another list, some said
those quirks alone made the product unacceptable).
> And you consider
> it a failure of the product that it doesn't satisfy 100% of *your
> personal needs* even though it does satisfy the needs of many others?
> That's a big egocentric, isn't it?
Peter, I don't see why you can't get your point across without the nasty
personal remarks. My "personal needs" are simply the need for an editor
to produce HTML that works on any browser. Or, if that's too much to
ask, just the two most common browsers. I can't help but think that your
mom's personal needs fall in the same category, and I can't imagine why
you consider that out of line. The FP users I've known fall into two
camps... those who know enough HTML to fix its mistakes, and those who
don't know enough about HTML to realize it is making mistakes. The fact
that some people don't realize something is broken doesn't exactly make
it whole, does it?
I suggest you read Matt Ion's post again for an example of what FP can
do. I'm really glad your mom is so happy with it, and I sincerely hope
she never tries to use the "cool" things like hover buttons that attract
so many people to FP in the first place. But honestly, why does it
bother you so much that some of us used it, didn't like the way it
mangled our pages, and chose to express our opinion?
