Microsoft's FrontPage and Macromedia's Dreamweaver are the two most popular WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editors. Both are aimed at different markets. While FrontPage can prove to be more beneficial for the novice user, where as Dreamweaver because of its advanced tools facility will do magic for the professional web designer. Given below is the comparison between the two which will help you in choosing the right one based upon your requirement.
FrontPage
FrontPage has been designed for the average home user who has a modest interest in web design. It is ideal for beginners and offers a range of special effects that will keep the developer busy for quite a while.
The FrontPage's latest version is 2003 and it has been built on top of the highly successful Microsoft Office suite. It benefits from having a similar appearance to Microsoft Word and many of the other Office based programs. The ‘non technical savvy' will appreciate such a close resemblance and an easy-to-use menu system. In fact FrontPage has functionalities like inserting images, tables and formatting text which are similar to a word processor. FrontPage also has an abundance of ready to use templates, particularly useful for the novice user.
FrontPage is really simple to use but it often generates lots of unwanted code which becomes difficult to manage. Also, it has been designed specifically for Internet Explorer and does not fully abide by the World Wide Web Standards. This means the web pages that look perfect in Internet Explorer often fall slightly out of sync in other leading browsers such as Mozilla Firefox. Another small hindrance of Frontage is that you need a web server that supports FrontPage extensions to get some features to work.
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is a professional level web editor. It has been designed to be used in a commercial environment and benefits from having advanced web design tools together with a tasteful graphical user interface. It is part of a great Macromedia suite and offers power database utilities and a wide range of e-commerce capabilities.
Macromedia products have been designed specifically with web design in mind and Dreamweaver is the industry standard for web editors.
Dreamweaver 8 is the most recent version which is part of the Macromedia Studio 8 suite. The tight integration between applications in the Studio makes it somewhat unique. One can easily switch from Dreamweaver to another product such as Fireworks, Flash and ColdFusion without putting any extra effort. Dreamweaver also enables you to build your own custom templates, allowing alterations to hundreds of pages to be made with one single change. It also makes the task of creating dynamic pages much easier by providing an array of database utilities. Additionally, Macromedia Contribute, a part of the Macromedia Studio suite is available which enables easy website maintenance. Moreover, ‘Non techies' can edit the content of their pages with the coding part being protected.
Dreamweaver is not easy to use and may pose difficulties for the novice user. The lack of beginner tools and usability may frustrate inexperienced users. Dreamweaver has an extensive collection of advanced tools which may seem a little complex for those who wish to merely edit pages. Dreamweaver is also a little more expensive than FrontPage.
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