Could I Build a home page with Alpha?

[Rayr]

Hi all,

I need to build a home page for my web site and I would like to know if I could
do this with Alpha or should I purchase something like macromedia or Microsoft FrontPage to make the htm page?

[John Hertzler]

You can certainly build a home page with the tools available with Alpha 5; however is you are looking at building a lot of pages without database content, you may want to look at other options that are expressly devoted to building other web content.

Perhaps others may have more knowledge, but I might suggest that you stay away from Front Page, as some of the features used by this program use special features and require a that Front Page Extensions be added to the server. I have not heard of anyone using the web server with Front Page.

[Edward Larrabee]

The Alpha Five HTML Editor is good for integrating components and Xbasic with HTML. However, it does not have all the productivity features of other products.

My experience with Front Page was that it was a pain. I personally like TextPad for situations where I am writing straight code and DreamWeaver for situations where I want a WYSIWYG preview.

[Rayr]

Thank you Ed and John,

I am looking at DreamWeaver and FrontPage, from what I heard from others also is I should stay clear of FrontPage but at the same time DreamWeaver has a long learning curve.

I downloaded DreamWeaver last night so I will see what happens.

[John Hertzler]

Option Contribute 3.1

Certainly Dreamweaver is one of the flagships for the power user. As an option, you might want to look at Contribute 3.1 from Macromedia, which cost less, is compatible with Dreamweaver and has a much shorter learning curve. A trial version is also available for this product and if you later become a power user, the move to Dreamweaver is less difficult.

A quick search for web design software will also produce any number of hits. I have seen some interesting products mentioned in other threads on this board. So its pretty much what do you want to do and how much you want to spend.

[Rayr]

Certainly Dreamweaver is one of the flagships for the power user. As an option, you might want to look at Contribute 3.1 from Macromedia, which cost less, is compatible with Dreamweaver and has a much shorter learning curve. A trial version is also available for this product and if you later become a power user, the move to Dreamweaver is less difficult.

A quick search for web design software will also produce any number of hits. I have seen some interesting products mentioned in other threads on this board. So its pretty much what do you want to do and how much you want to spend.

thank you John

[andycaps]

Thank you Ed and John,

I am looking at DreamWeaver and FrontPage, from what I heard from others also is I should stay clear of FrontPage but at the same time DreamWeaver has a long learning curve.

I downloaded DreamWeaver last night so I will see what happens.

Try http://www.coffeecup.com/ - amazing tools and you can try before you buy, hardly no learning curve to climb!!!

Regards
Andy

[Hansolo]

Interesting

Perhaps others may have more knowledge, but I might suggest that you stay away from Front Page, as some of the features used by this program use special features and require a that Front Page Extensions be added to the server. I have not heard of anyone using the web server with Front Page.

Interesting coming from an Alpha5 forum given that Alpha5 not only has to use Xbasic to access special features but also requires an independent proprietary server. Next to that I don't think FrontPage forces much on the user. I use FrontPage and believe me compared with the other packages out there you are not going to get a more RAD web development platform with the easy of use, even without using the FP extensions. Also many ISP and commercial servers support the FP extensions so don't let that scare you.

C

[Rayr]

Try http://www.coffeecup.com/ - amazing tools and you can try before you buy, hardly no learning curve to climb!!!

Regards
Andy

Andy,

Have you tried any of the others out their like Dreamweaver or FrontPage?

Thanks for the link, I will take a look at that.

[Rayr]

Interesting coming from an Alpha5 forum given that Alpha5 not only has to use Xbasic to access special features but also requires an independent proprietary server. Next to that I don't think FrontPage forces much on the user. I use FrontPage and believe me compared with the other packages out there you are not going to get a more RAD web development platform with the easy of use, even without using the FP extensions. Also many ISP and commercial servers support the FP extensions so don't let that scare you.

C

C,

Do you have a link to a web site you created with FrontPage that I can look at?

[Dermot]

I have used Frontage for 5 years now to build my own sites and never had a problem. Almost all web hosting companies have the Frontpage extensions so it is not a big deal anymore. You cannot beat it for putting a site together quickly, plus there are some great templates you can buy to get a jump start.

If you build web sites for a living it may not be the best tool but for you own work it will do just fine. Dreamweaver is no doubt a great tool and I have tried it many times but never had the time it would take to be actually get anything done. Also if you want to use the Coldfusion part of Dreamweaver for database stuff, it will require that the server supports Coldfusion so it is not much different than Frontpage in that regard.

Dismissing Frontpage for building a website because of its extensions is like dismissing the Alpha Web builder for building database web sites because it requires the WAS server.

Here is a link to a product specific site of mine built with Frontpage. It is simple, clean and fast, no fancy graphics. www.quickestimator.com

Regards

[John Hertzler]

Compatibility of Front Page and the Alpha Web Server

I used FrontPage for a number of years and would not dispute anything that Dermot Fitzpatrick says about the program. Once can easily paint forms with text boxes, radio or drop boxes that can be easily set to send email to selected person(s) or accumulated into poor man’s date base by forming a comma delimited txt file that can be imported for processing by a data base or spread sheet. Scrolling Banners, Counters and Graphic Features are also only a few clicks away but many features are based on proprietary features.

If you are looking for a fairly powerful program to manage a web site but do not want to invest a lot of time in learning to code with html, FrontPage is definitely worth a look. However, if you are looking for something that integrates or plays well with the Alpha Web Server I would be reluctant to recommend using FrontPage unless someone here says that they have successfully integrated the two.

Much of my experience with FrontPage is with the last generation but there are two problems that I would have concern about.

• Articles I have read on FrontPage state that it leaves artifacts on editing and does not provide clean html. While I never had problems, I pretty much stuck to editing in FrontPage. I understand that the newest edition has cleaned some of the coding issues up. Still, I would question how well the html would be interpreted by the Alpha Web Server.
• Chuck Tanner states many ISP and commercial servers support the FP extensions so don't let that scare you. While this is true, I have not seen any of the commercial sites offering the Alpha Web Server service, touting that they can offer FrontPage Extensions. Perhaps they could correct me if I am wrong. Or has anyone running their own site successfully integrated the Extensions?

The thing to keep in mind is that FrontPage is a hybrid between an html coding program and a proprietary system. If someone can affirm that the above are not issues, I might go back to Front Page; otherwise, I would look elsewhere. As stated above, if you do not want the learning curve of Dreamweaver, Contribute may be worth a look. It integrates well with Dreamweaver including its templates but is easier to learn and use. I have used it to manage a site professionally developed with Dreamweaver. It probably offers the least pain to move up to Dreamweaver or other Macromedia tools. Otherwise other programs like CoffeeCup are probably better options if they meet your foreseeable needs, as I would not expect them to present the potential problems of FrontPage.

[Lenny Forziati]

• Articles I have read on FrontPage state that it leaves artifacts on editing and does not provide clean html. While I never had problems, I pretty much stuck to editing in FrontPage. I understand that the newest edition has cleaned some of the coding issues up. Still, I would question how well the html would be interpreted by the Alpha Web Server.

While FrontPage does sometimes generate non-standard HTML, as you mentioned the more recent versions are better about this. But in any case, the Web Application Server does not interpret HTML, it sends it to the browser as-is and it is the browser's job to interpret and render it. This is the way all web servers work. So in this regard, there is no problem using FrontPage to create pages that will be served by the Web Application Server.

• Chuck Tanner states many ISP and commercial servers support the FP extensions so don't let that scare you. While this is true, I have not seen any of the commercial sites offering the Alpha Web Server service, touting that they can offer FrontPage Extensions. Perhaps they could correct me if I am wrong. Or has anyone running their own site successfully integrated the Extensions?

It is not possible to use the FrontPage Extensions with the Web Application Server. This is because Microsoft only makes them available for IIS and Apache web servers.

Also, as of FrontPage 2003, there are no longer any server extensions available. Instead, if you wish to use the advanced FrontPage functionality, you must host your site with a server that uses Windows SharePoint Services, which is only available for Windows Server 2003 servers. This means that all of the Unix/Linux based hosting providers that currently support the FrontPage extensions will not be able to host FrontPage 2003 sites that go beyond basic HTML.

[John Hertzler]

Thanks for your comments Lenny. Every day I get a little more understanding of the Web Server and I take it that your comments support that FrontPage may not be the best option for working with an Alpha Dominated website.

[Lenny Forziati]

Actually FP is fine as long as you don't use the features that require the FP server extensions. And chances are that if you are using the Web App Server, you don't want them anyway.

Thanks for your comments Lenny. Every day I get a little more understanding of the Web Server and I take it that your comments support that FrontPage may not be the best option for working with an Alpha Dominated website.