While I was browsing Digg.com yesterday I came across an article that discusses the next generation of Web authoring tools for the Microsoft Office suite. In the article Microsoft announced that the FrontPage product will be replaced by SharePoint Designer and Expression Web Designer.

Each of these new products is focused at a different type of user with Expression being aimed primarily at the FrontPage market. This being said, I think the bigger story here is that FrontPage is being replaced.

Many people in the development community will view this as a positive move for the industry and for the most part I agree but one must recognize the impact that FrontPage had on the growth of the Web in general.

When the World Wide Web started catching people's attention back in the early and mid nineties they wanted to start creating their own pages for a number of reasons. Some people were curious, others worked for companies that wanted to be viewed as technologically progressive and viewed having a Web presence as one way to accomplish that goal. Unfortunately the only easily obtainable/readily available/affordable tools capable of producing Web pages were text editors.

Using text editors meant learning this new language called HTML that was comprised of these things called tags that had to be applied in some sequence in order to create a page. For some people (the typical person reading this type of article will fall into this category), learning HTML was no problem but for others though, particularly non-technical people, HTML was intimidating. Those that found HTML intimidating often had difficulty remembering tags or envisioning how using specific tags or tag combinations would appear in the browser. Furthermore, creating pages could be time consuming for people digging through reference manuals trying to remember which tag to use to make text bold.

The combination of all of these issues kept many people from building Web pages and therefore slowed the adoption of this great emerging technology. What these people wanted was a Word-like tool that would simplify the creation of Web pages by automatically creating HTML as the document was created in a WSIWYG fashion.

FrontPage filled that want and much more. It was a product aimed at non-technical people that wanted to create simple Web pages without creating HTML. It was particularly useful for small Web sites, particularly departmental intranet sites in that not only did it meet the basic users' needs, it provided additional functionality like site mapping and some reporting capabilities. Additionally, FrontPage allowed more advanced users to manipulate the HTML directly.

It is because of FrontPage that people were able to more easily communicate with friends and family and companies were able to more easily share data across departmental boundaries without spending the money to train people to use HTML. For people that wanted to learn HTML, FrontPage also provided them with an interactive starting point where they could do something in the designer mode and switch to the HTML mode to see the effect.

Many in the technical community are quick to point out the problems with FrontPage. Opponents of FrontPage argue against its use from a purely technical standpoint. Additionally, they argue against it as though the tool is intended as a tool for producing enterprise grade Web applications. Some of the most common arguments against the use of FrontPage include:

• It rewrites HTML
• It generates non-standard, Internet Explorer specific HTML

These arguments are not without merit to the technical user but those that make them quite often tend to disregard the product's target market. What opponents of FrontPage tend to forget is that the typical FrontPage user simply does not care about Web standards and is typically using Internet Explorer anyway. This particularly applies to corporate users where the browser used is dictated by the company and creating these pages is just part of their job.

In most cases, users of FrontPage just want something easy to use so they can share photos with friends and family or post documents that may be of interest to other departments. Most users of FrontPage are not trying to create enterprise grade Web applications. In fact, trying to do so with FrontPage is an exercise in frustration particularly for the reasons listed above.

One may argue that these users should care about Web standards and the like if they're going to be creating Web pages but they don't see it that way. All they want to do is accomplish a specific task and not be bogged down in the technical implementation details. If one wants to hook up a new garbage disposal, one does not need to know the chemical composition of PVC pipe or the mechanics of the disposal. The same holds true when all a person wants to do is include a new portrait on their family Web site. The point is that when all one wants to do is put existing parts together, one only needs to know that they parts work, not how the parts work or how they were constructed. In software engineering, we call this encapsulation. We use encapsulation all the time when we call methods, why is it then unacceptable for others to apply the same concept?

Attempting to create enterprise grade Web applications with FrontPage is akin to trying to use Access to manage mission-critical data accessible by hundreds of users simultaneously; those that have tried have found that it simply doesn't work!

Trying to use FrontPage or Access to accomplish the above goals is misapplication of technology and is like trying to pound in a screw with a tack hammer; it's difficult to do if it can be done at all!

The Web and its related technologies have advanced significantly since FrontPage was first released. Technologies such as scripting language support, CSS, and other enhancements including changes to HTML have been added and FrontPage hasn't been able to keep up as well as some would like. FrontPage is a product that has lived beyond its ability to be truly useful on the modern Web. That being said, it has served its purpose well for the past nine years. I just hope that the replacement products can fill the same need as well.