BELLYDANCE CENTRAL - Everything Belly Dance! Welcome to BHUZ - Biggest Online BellyDance Community - View Single Post

*Shira* · 09-08-2007, 10:22 PM

I STRONGLY recommend staying AWAY, far far AWAY, from any Microsoft product for web authoring purposes. This applies to FrontPage, Word, Publisher, and anything else Microsoft may produce that does html generation.

I mean it. If you use a Microsoft product, you will incur your rightful punishment.

I know a dancer who published her class schedule on the web using a Microsoft product - and anyone whose browser was NOT Internet Explorer (read: anyone who was using Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Safari, Opera, America Online, or any other browser) saw ONLY a blank page. Only people using Internet Explorer could see the class schedule. She lost prospective students as a result.

Also, every Microsoft product creates hideous, impossible-to-read html for even the simplest pages. It's horrid. Positively horrid. If you ever have anyone else help you with your web site, they'll throw up their hands in despair (or just throw up, all over your keyboard) at the mere sight of the awful html generated by those Microsoft products. I break out in a rash at the mere sight of Microsoft-generated html, and I've been personally done ALL web work on www.shira.net for the last 10 years, ever since the site was "born" in July 1997.

Microsoft products INTENTIONALLY insert Microsoft-specific stuff into your page that only Microsoft's own browser will be unable to read. This means that your page will look perfectly nice in Internet Explorer, but in any other browser the graphics, page layout, colors, and fonts will all look ugly.

Microsoft products insert special features into your page called Front Page Extensions. In general, these work ONLY on web sites that are hosted on a computer running Windows. I don't know what godaddy runs today, but if they suggested Front Page then they probably run on Windows. The problem is that if you ever decide you want to move your web site to another hosting company, you must either 1) choose another that runs Windows-based servers, or 2) modify your entire web site to remove all the Microsoft-specific Front Page extensions because most Linux/UNIX web sites don't support them.

And finally, when you install a Microsoft product, it comes with a "feature" that inserts a Microsoft advertisement at the bottom of each and every page that it creates for you. (I know this was true when a friend used Microsoft Publisher, not sure about Word or FrontPage.) Their hope is that you won't notice, and will leave it there, and they will get lots of FREE advertising at YOUR expense. There is a way to disable that feature, but that requires you to notice that it's there and figure out how to make it stop, which many novice web site authors don't do.

Okay, I'll quit ranting now.

09-08-2007, 10:22 PM	#8
Shira Master BHUZzer Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,674	I STRONGLY recommend staying AWAY, far far AWAY, from any Microsoft product for web authoring purposes. This applies to FrontPage, Word, Publisher, and anything else Microsoft may produce that does html generation. I mean it. If you use a Microsoft product, you will incur your rightful punishment. I know a dancer who published her class schedule on the web using a Microsoft product - and anyone whose browser was NOT Internet Explorer (read: anyone who was using Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Safari, Opera, America Online, or any other browser) saw ONLY a blank page. Only people using Internet Explorer could see the class schedule. She lost prospective students as a result. Also, every Microsoft product creates hideous, impossible-to-read html for even the simplest pages. It's horrid. Positively horrid. If you ever have anyone else help you with your web site, they'll throw up their hands in despair (or just throw up, all over your keyboard) at the mere sight of the awful html generated by those Microsoft products. I break out in a rash at the mere sight of Microsoft-generated html, and I've been personally done ALL web work on www.shira.net for the last 10 years, ever since the site was "born" in July 1997. Microsoft products INTENTIONALLY insert Microsoft-specific stuff into your page that only Microsoft's own browser will be unable to read. This means that your page will look perfectly nice in Internet Explorer, but in any other browser the graphics, page layout, colors, and fonts will all look ugly. Microsoft products insert special features into your page called Front Page Extensions. In general, these work ONLY on web sites that are hosted on a computer running Windows. I don't know what godaddy runs today, but if they suggested Front Page then they probably run on Windows. The problem is that if you ever decide you want to move your web site to another hosting company, you must either 1) choose another that runs Windows-based servers, or 2) modify your entire web site to remove all the Microsoft-specific Front Page extensions because most Linux/UNIX web sites don't support them. And finally, when you install a Microsoft product, it comes with a "feature" that inserts a Microsoft advertisement at the bottom of each and every page that it creates for you. (I know this was true when a friend used Microsoft Publisher, not sure about Word or FrontPage.) Their hope is that you won't notice, and will leave it there, and they will get lots of FREE advertising at YOUR expense. There is a way to disable that feature, but that requires you to notice that it's there and figure out how to make it stop, which many novice web site authors don't do. Okay, I'll quit ranting now.