Microsoft FrontPage was a
WYSIWYGWYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
HTML editorAn HTML editor is a software application for creating web pages. Although the HTML markup of a web page can be written with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience and added functionality. For example, many HTML editors work not only with HTML, but also with related...
and web site administration tool from
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for the
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
line of
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s. It was branded as part of the
Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
suite from 1997 to 2003. Microsoft FrontPage has since been replaced by
Microsoft Expression WebMicrosoft Expression Web, code-named Quartz, is an HTML editor and general web design software product by Microsoft. It is part of the Expression Studio suite....
and
Sharepoint DesignerMicrosoft SharePoint Designer is a specialized HTML editor and web design freeware for creating or modifying Microsoft SharePoint sites and web pages. It is a part of Microsoft SharePoint family of products...
, which were first released in December 2006 alongside
Microsoft Office 2007Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...
.
Microsoft FrontPage was a
WYSIWYGWYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
HTML editorAn HTML editor is a software application for creating web pages. Although the HTML markup of a web page can be written with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience and added functionality. For example, many HTML editors work not only with HTML, but also with related...
and web site administration tool from
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for the
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
line of
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s. It was branded as part of the
Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
suite from 1997 to 2003. Microsoft FrontPage has since been replaced by
Microsoft Expression WebMicrosoft Expression Web, code-named Quartz, is an HTML editor and general web design software product by Microsoft. It is part of the Expression Studio suite....
and
Sharepoint DesignerMicrosoft SharePoint Designer is a specialized HTML editor and web design freeware for creating or modifying Microsoft SharePoint sites and web pages. It is a part of Microsoft SharePoint family of products...
, which were first released in December 2006 alongside
Microsoft Office 2007Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...
.
History
FrontPage was initially created by the
Cambridge, MassachusettsCambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
company
Vermeer Technologies IncorporatedVermeer Technologies Incorporated was a software company founded in 1994 by Charles H. Ferguson and Randy Forgaard. Its products were FrontPage, a website/webpage development tool and Personal Web Server, a web server to complement developing in FrontPage...
, evidence of which can be easily spotted in filenames and directories prefixed
_vti_ in web sites created using FrontPage. Vermeer was acquired by Microsoft in January 1996 specifically so that Microsoft could add FrontPage to its product line-up allowing them to gain an advantage in the
browser warsBrowser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote two specific rivalries: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during...
as FrontPage was designed to author for their own browser,
Internet ExplorerWindows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
.
As a
WYSIWYGWYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
editor, FrontPage is designed to hide the details of pages' HTML code from the user, making it possible for novices to easily create
web pageA web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...
s and sites.
FrontPage's initial outing under the Microsoft name came in 1996 with the release of
Windows NT 4.0Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...
Server and its constituent
web serverWeb server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
Internet Information ServicesInternet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
2.0. Bundled on CD with the NT 4.0 Server release, FrontPage 1.1 would run under NT 4.0 (Server or Workstation) or Windows 95. Up to FrontPage 98, the
FrontPage Editor, which was used for designing pages was a separate application from the
FrontPage Explorer which was used to manage website folders. With FrontPage 2000, both programs were merged into the
Editor.
FrontPage used to require a set of server-side plugins originally known as IIS Extensions. The extension set was significantly enhanced for Microsoft inclusion of FrontPage into the Microsoft Office line-up with Office 97 and subsequently renamed
FrontPage Server ExtensionsFrontPage Server Extensions are a software technology that allows Microsoft FrontPage clients to communicate with web servers, and provide additional functionality intended for websites. Frequent security problems have marred the history of this Microsoft proprietary technology...
(FPSE). Both sets of extensions needed to be installed on the target
web serverWeb server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
for its content and publishing features to work. Microsoft offered both Windows and Unix-based versions of FPSE. FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions worked with earlier versions of FrontPage as well. FPSE 2002 was the last released version which also works with FrontPage 2003 and was later updated for IIS 6.0 as well. However, with FrontPage 2003, Microsoft began moving away from proprietary Server Extensions to standard protocols like FTP and
WebDAVWeb-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
for remote web publishing and authoring. FrontPage 2003 can also be used with Windows SharePoint Services.
A version for
Mac OSMac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
was released in 1998; however, it had fewer features than the Windows product and Microsoft has never updated it.
In 2006, Microsoft announced that FrontPage would eventually be superseded by two products.
Microsoft SharePoint DesignerMicrosoft SharePoint Designer is a specialized HTML editor and web design freeware for creating or modifying Microsoft SharePoint sites and web pages. It is a part of Microsoft SharePoint family of products...
will allow business professionals to design SharePoint-based applications.
Microsoft Expression WebMicrosoft Expression Web, code-named Quartz, is an HTML editor and general web design software product by Microsoft. It is part of the Expression Studio suite....
is targeted at the web design professional for the creation of feature-rich web sites. Microsoft announced that they would be discontinuing Microsoft FrontPage by December 2006.
Features
Some of the features in the last version of FrontPage include:
- FrontPage 2003 consists of a Split View option to allow the user to code in Code View and preview in Design View without the hassle of switching from the Design and Code View tabs for each review
- Dynamic Web Templates (DWT) were included for the first time in FrontPage 2003 allowing users to create a single template that could be used across multiple pages and even the whole Web site
- Interactive Buttons give users a new easy way to create web graphics for navigation and links, eliminating the need for a complicated image-editing package such as Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
- The accessibility checker gives the user the ability to check if their code is standards compliant and that their Web site is easily accessible for people with disabilities. An HTML optimizer is included to aid in optimizing code to make it legible and quicker to process
- Intellisense
IntelliSense is Microsoft's implementation of autocompletion, best known for its use in the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment...
, which is a form of autocompletion, is a key feature in FrontPage 2003 that assists the user while typing in Code View. When working in Code View, Intellisense will suggest tags and/or properties for the code that the user is entering which significantly reduces the time to write code. The Quick Tag Editor shows the user the tag they are currently in when editing in Design View. This also includes the option to edit the specific tag/property from within the Tag Editor
- Code Snippets give users the advantage to create snippets of their commonly used pieces of code allowing them to store it for easy access whenever it is next needed
- FrontPage 2003 includes support for programming in ASP.NET
ASP.NET is a Web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic Web sites, Web applications and Web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages ...
a server-sideServer-side refers to operations that are performed by the server in a client–server relationship in computer networking.Typically, a server is a software program, such as a web server, that runs on a remote server, reachable from a user's local computer or workstation...
scripting languageA scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...
that adds interactivity to Web sites and Web pages
- FrontPage 2003 includes support macro in VBA
Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 and its associated integrated development environment , which are built into most Microsoft Office applications...
Versions
- Vermeer FrontPage 1.0
- 1995 - Microsoft FrontPage 1.1
- 1996 - Microsoft FrontPage 97 (version 2)
- 1997 - Microsoft FrontPage Express 2.0 (free stripped-down version came with Internet Explorer 4
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 is a graphical web browser released in September 1997 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for Apple Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX and marketed as "The Web the Way You Want It".It was one of the main participants of the first...
and 5Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 was a graphical web browser released in March 1999 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but initially with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Sun Solaris, and HP-UX. It was one of the main participants of the first browser war...
, and could be found online from numerous shareware websites
- 1996 - Microsoft FrontPage for Macintosh 1.0
- 1997 - Microsoft FrontPage 98 (version 3)
- 1999 - Microsoft FrontPage 2000 (version 9): Included in Office 2000 Premium and Developer editions
- 2001 - Microsoft FrontPage 2002 (version 10): Included in Office XP Professional with FrontPage (volume license only), Office XP Professional Special Edition and Office XP Developer edition.
- 2003 - Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 (version 11): Not included in any of the Office 2003 editions, sold separately. It was included with Windows Small Business Server 2003.
Note: There is no official version 4 to 8, because after FrontPage was included in some Office editions, the FrontPage version numbers followed their Office version numbers. Nonetheless, version numbers may appear in the meta tags of HTML code generated by these versions of FrontPage.
See also
- Microsoft Expression Web
Microsoft Expression Web, code-named Quartz, is an HTML editor and general web design software product by Microsoft. It is part of the Expression Studio suite....
- FrontPage Server Extensions
FrontPage Server Extensions are a software technology that allows Microsoft FrontPage clients to communicate with web servers, and provide additional functionality intended for websites. Frequent security problems have marred the history of this Microsoft proprietary technology...
(FPSE)
- SharePoint Designer
- Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
- Comparison of office suites
- Comparison of HTML editors
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of HTML editors.This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up to date...
- List of HTML editors
External links