Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 for Windows

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I have never written a review before, but I felt compelled to warn others new to building websites who might buy this book. While the critical third chapter outlining how to structure a website appears an excellent presentation, there is NO mention of subwebs (these are the typical http://www.website.com/subweb/subweb2/etc that you see throughout the web.

What is presented is well written, but even though 2003 appears on the title, the author has not appeared to even open the help pages in the application to read what topics are currently present.

Thus there is no discussion of Share Point nor of the related web packages nor of security/passwords. Additionally, there is no discussion of the relationship between the remote computer and the version stored and published on the server. At this point I'm sure many other omissions may be present, but having "designed" a website and later deciding to break out part of it into a subweb, I found to my consternation that unless I was on a server running Share Point, I would have to completely rebuild my subweb from scratch. Of course I could copy the files, but the entire navigation/link structure and styling requires the use of a web package, and that is unavailable on a remote computer not running Server 2003.

Thus, Buyer Beware! This is an excellent, but fatally flawed and outdated instruction text. It may be of value for those who want to get the flavor of how to build a single web page, but beyond that, I suggest the prospective website builder would be well served to look to texts with greater depth.

I liked this book and found it useful. Software programs used to come with user manuals. The paper manuals allowed users to learn each new program. Over time, manufacturers eliminated including the manuals. The justification was that learning help for each new program was now "on line". Unless users printed the instructions, each "newbie" had to go back and forth between the new program and on-line help. No longer could you have a paper copy on hand to refer to unless you went through the expensive/time consuming process of printing the on-line help. No longer could new programs be studied while away from the computer. All of a sudden it became necessary to buy a user manual. The Visual QuickStart Guide is one of the best. It's understandable, useful, practical, and best of all written in non-geek.