From The Inquirer, Microsoft FrontPage falls victim to blogging culture.
It’s become obvious that FrontPage is going to be quietly dropped from the Beast of Redmond’s regular user orientated offerings – only to be replaced by professional design tools. Blogging sites are replacing personal Web sites for the average PC user.
Originally a classic part of Microsoft’s Office suite, FrontPage’s role will be taken care of by two new products – Expression Web and Sharepoint Designer. Both are blatantly aimed at “the professional Web designer” rather than ordinary PC users.
According to FrontPage’s own home page, “After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006.”
This is so true. Back in 1999, when I first encountered MS FrontPage, I was already frustrated with it. Macromedia Adobe Dreamweaver ate the rest of the pie.
So, R.I.P. MS FP.
MS FrontPage never lived up to its potential when dreamweaver arrived.
And MS has internal competition: Windows Live Spaces.
I agree with Miguel, it’s now MySpace and Friendster which makes these kids crazy over webdesign.
Haven’t used FrontPage extensively, been a fan of Dreamweaver eversince. hehe***
Good for M$, it’s a great decision to admit failure hehe
I was using Frontpage 2003 (yeah, I was a n00b then, gimme some slack) before I started blogging seriously. And Miguel is right, MySpace is now the bottom rung for kids with bad design taste.
Even in the 90s, webmasters are wary of using Frontpage. You’ll be ostracized by your peers if you use it, back then.
The HTML code produced even in the newest release, was just awful.
The main competitor of Frontpage in the 90s was Homesite, which as purchased by Macromedia, which was purchased by Adobe.
Either way, Adobe wins in the end.
I don’t think anything killed FrontPage. It’s so horendoulsy crappy and useless, even its creator Microsoft refuses to use it for their websites. Sad and alone, it committed suicide.
Blogging sites replaced personal home pages for the older users. But for the kids who used to make flashing and blinking webpages – it’s now MySpace!