Introduction: In the world of the Internet, there is the most essential thing which is the web page. Programmers used to edit their web pages by normal word editors such as Notepad.
After many years of web authorizing, web pages became more complex. Therefore, it is too difficult to program web pages manually using normal word editors because of using so much graphics. As a result, many companies provid their own web editors. The most popular softwares are Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. In the web design world, there are two large groups of web designers, one of which prefers Microsoft FrontPage and one of which prefers Macromedia Dreamweaver. In this debate, there are both advantages and disadvantages in using these two softwares.
Microsoft Frontpage:
Microsoft FrontPage:The idea of providing a web editor as Microsoft FrontPage is to reduce the difficulties of creating websites. The birthday of this software which is offered by Vermeer Technologies, Inc was in 1994. The software was called "WYSIWYG", What You See Is What You Get. Then, Microsoft, Corp bought the software rights and changed the name to Microsoft FrontPage in 1995. After that, Microsoft has made several updates of the software: version 1.1, version 2, express 2.0 and so on until Microsoft FrontPage 2003. However, Microsoft this year, 2007 has stopped offering FrontPage and they created two kinds of softwares, Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Expression Web.
There are two advantages of using Microsoft FrontPage. One of them that is the interface of Microsoft FrontPage is the same as Microsoft Word. For that reason, people who usually use Microsoft Word can deal with FrontPage's tools. Moreover, the software is very easy to use. Another benefit of using this software is providing amazing themes with which you can create very useful website. Therefore, there are a lot of web buttons, banners, and images in this software.
On the other hand, there are two disadvantages of using this program. First, the software usually put lots of redundant codes in the web page programming. Your web pages which are created with Microsoft FrontPage could be browsed clearly by Microsoft Internet Explorer, but they couldn't be browsed well by other web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox. Second, you need a web server in order to run some dynamic activities. Joe, in his article "Macromedia Dreamweaver Vs Microsoft FrontPage" says" Another small hindrance of Frontage is that you need a web server that supports FrontPage extensions to get some features to work."
Macromedia Dreamweaver:
Macromedia Dreamweaver is one of the most powerful softwares all over the web authorizing world. Macromedia Corp, which offered Flash and Fireworks softwares, entered the world of web development by providing Macromedia Dreamweaver in 1996. Therefore, Macromedia Corp developed the "WYSIWYG", What You See Is What You Get, to create the Dreamweaver software. Since Macromedia Dreamweaver became the most important seller of the company, they made a number of updates for this software: Dreamweaver 2.0, Dreamweaver 3.0 until Dreamweaver CS3. In fact, Adobe Corp bought Macromedia Corp in 2006, so they became one company last year.
There are three advantages of using Macromedia Dreamweaver. First, the software supports many kinds of animation such as flash. Furthermore, there are some great flash buttons that are offered with Macromedia Dreamweaver. Second, you can make lots of web templates that you use for a very huge number of web pages. Third, the software supports a large group of programming languages. Therefore, you can create your website by Active Server Pages (ASP), Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) … etc.
In contrast, there two disadvantages in using this software. One of them is the difficulty of using the software's tools. According to Joe, in his article "Macromedia Dreamweaver Vs Microsoft FrontPage" using Macromedia Dreamweaver is not easy because of lack of the beginner tools. Therefore, the software's interface has a lot of complicated tools that deal with a huge number of features. Another disadvantage of using Macromedia Dreamweaver is a little more expensive than Microsoft FrontPage.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the most popular softwares that create web pages are Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Each one has a number of advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of Microsoft FrontPage focus on the easiness of using the program, but disadvantages of that software focus on programming websites. The advantages of Macromedia Dreamweaver focus on how this software is perfect for using the geatest web graphics. In contrast, the disadvantages of that software focus on the difficulty of using the tools and expenses. In my opinion, I prefer to use Microsoft FrontPage since I am familiar with Microsoft Office. Moreover, I have been using Microsoft FrontPage since 2000. As a result, I have a good experience of using this software.
Sources:
Microsoft FrontPage: From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage
Macromedia Dreamweaver Vs Microsoft FrontPage: Posted by Joe on: 2006-07-30, http://www.selfseo.com/story-18502.php
Managing Web Sites With Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004: Posted by Andrew Switzky, http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~i385f/archive/switzky_a/MacromediaDreamweaverMX2004.htm
Adobe Dreamweaver: From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamweaver
