client wants to use FrontPage

[Andy]

hello all

I've just finished a reasonably simple site for a client, validated
it, checked it across browsers/resolutions etc.

The problem for me is that my clients want to keep it updated using
FrontPage - I suppose I should just let them do what they want with
it, but I have visions of them messing things up with FrontPage and
then asking me to fix it.

I haven't used FrontPage since 1997 so I don't know if it still has
quirks or produces bloat, but I've always had the impression it
doesn't produce valid HTML.

So: should I even care what they want to do with it after I've handed
it over to them - and is there something other than FrontPage they can
use? I get the impression that they wouldn't be at all comfortable
trying to hand-code.

ta
Andy

[Karl Groves]

"Andy" <[e-mail]> wrote in message
news:5e********************************@4ax.com...

hello all

I've just finished a reasonably simple site for a client, validated
it, checked it across browsers/resolutions etc.

The problem for me is that my clients want to keep it updated using
FrontPage - I suppose I should just let them do what they want with
it, but I have visions of them messing things up with FrontPage and
then asking me to fix it.

Hopefully you have a contract.
If not, you should at least inform them (in writing/ via email) that the
services you have offered are for initial design & implementation ONLY.
Also, inform them of whatever your rate is for maintenance & changes and
that you will charge DOUBLE if you have to go fix something that they've
gone and fucked up.

-Karl

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Andy <[e-mail]> wrote:

The problem for me is that my clients want to keep it updated using
FrontPage

Which FrontPage? There are so many versions around. FrontPage 2003 seems
to preserve the markup reasonably well. If you just open a page on
FrontPage and change the texts, and perhaps add a paragraph or so, it
results in essentially the same markup as the original.

Problems arise if people start e.g. adding "headings" by entering a
paragraph and just increasing its font. In FrontPage, you can do things
in so many ways, and you can do different things that produce the same
appearance. So this boils down to the question whether they really know
how to use FrontPage properly.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Stan Brown]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
(about Frontpage use)

Problems arise if people start e.g. adding "headings" by entering a
paragraph and just increasing its font. In FrontPage, you can do things
in so many ways, and you can do different things that produce the same
appearance. So this boils down to the question whether they really know
how to use FrontPage properly.

I submit that to "use Frontpage properly" a person needs to know
enough HTML that it would be easier just to edit the HTML!

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Stan McCann]

Andy wrote:

hello all

I've just finished a reasonably simple site for a client, validated
it, checked it across browsers/resolutions etc.

The problem for me is that my clients want to keep it updated using
FrontPage - I suppose I should just let them do what they want with
it, but I have visions of them messing things up with FrontPage and
then asking me to fix it.

I haven't used FrontPage since 1997 so I don't know if it still has
quirks or produces bloat, but I've always had the impression it
doesn't produce valid HTML.

So: should I even care what they want to do with it after I've handed
it over to them - and is there something other than FrontPage they can
use? I get the impression that they wouldn't be at all comfortable
trying to hand-code.

Make certain there is nothing attributing the site to you, then let them
have at it. If they screw it up and want you to fix it, charge them for
the site design all over again. Don't fix the garbage left by FP, just
start anew. Make sure they know what you are doing up front so there
are no surprises/arguments later. I had the same issue and the client
did screw it up but went out of business before ever wanting to fix it.
The site is long gone now, but I quit showing it to potential clients
long before the site was gone.

--
Stan McCann
Tularosa Basin chapter ABATE of NM Cooordinator, Alamogordo, NM
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) :( http://surecann.com/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

[Saqib Ali]

Try Macromedia's contribute.
http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/

I have found it to the best editor for your clients/content managers
if you don't want them to mess the layout/valid HTML.

Saqib Ali
http://validate.sf.net

Andy <[e-mail]> wrote in message news:<5e********************************@4ax.com>. ..

hello all

I've just finished a reasonably simple site for a client, validated
it, checked it across browsers/resolutions etc.

The problem for me is that my clients want to keep it updated using
FrontPage - I suppose I should just let them do what they want with
it, but I have visions of them messing things up with FrontPage and
then asking me to fix it.

I haven't used FrontPage since 1997 so I don't know if it still has
quirks or produces bloat, but I've always had the impression it
doesn't produce valid HTML.

So: should I even care what they want to do with it after I've handed
it over to them - and is there something other than FrontPage they can
use? I get the impression that they wouldn't be at all comfortable
trying to hand-code.

ta
Andy

[Shawn K. Quinn]

Andy wrote:

hello all

I've just finished a reasonably simple site for a client, validated
it, checked it across browsers/resolutions etc.

The problem for me is that my clients want to keep it updated using
FrontPage - I suppose I should just let them do what they want with
it, but I have visions of them messing things up with FrontPage and
then asking me to fix it.
Which is entirely possible. The advice another poster gave to charge double
to fix Frontpage's screwups is entirely reasonable.
I haven't used FrontPage since 1997 so I don't know if it still has
quirks or produces bloat, but I've always had the impression it
doesn't produce valid HTML.
Well, it's a Microsoft product, and I've always had the impression always
been better at making IE sites than Web sites.
So: should I even care what they want to do with it after I've handed
it over to them - and is there something other than FrontPage they can
use? I get the impression that they wouldn't be at all comfortable
trying to hand-code.

There are many other things than Frontpage they can use, but in order for
one to edit Web pages in any reasonable fashion, one needs to know HTML.
Let me make it clear: Even if they are using Frontpage, they need to know
HTML. In particular they need to know that you make a first-level heading
with <h1>, not <font size="7"> or some other deprecated or structurally
misleading crap.

--
Shawn K. Quinn

[Stan Brown]

"Stan McCann" <st**@surecann.com> wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

Make certain there is nothing attributing the site to you, then let them
have at it. If they screw it up and want you to fix it, charge them for
the site design all over again. Don't fix the garbage left by FP, just
start anew.

While I agree with you in principle, as a practical matter a
client's response is likely to be "Well, if that's your attitude
we'll get someone else, thank you very much." Only the OP knows
whether he needs the business that much.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Stan Brown <th************@fastmail.fm> wrote:

I submit that to "use Frontpage properly" a person needs to know
enough HTML that it would be easier just to edit the HTML!

Not necessarily. If you use a decent tutorial that tells you how to do
some basic things (write a paragraph, or a heading, or set overall font
face, or construct a simple table) in FrontPage and stick to doing such
things, as a content maintainer normally should, then the results will be
fairly good. Assuming, naturally, that the tutorial is fairly good.
(And naturally the author of the tutorial must know HTML well.)

(As you may guess, I have written an illustrated tutorial on FrontPage,
in Finnish, to appear in a few months. I must confess that it contains
some choices that don't produce optimal HTML, since that would require
extra actions by the user, and it's a beginner-level booklet. Generally,
there are many ways to do things in FrontPage, and unfortunately the
easiest way is often not the one that produces cleanest HTML code.)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Stan McCann]

Stan Brown wrote:

"Stan McCann" <st**@surecann.com> wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

Make certain there is nothing attributing the site to you, then let them
have at it. If they screw it up and want you to fix it, charge them for
the site design all over again. Don't fix the garbage left by FP, just
start anew.

While I agree with you in principle, as a practical matter a
client's response is likely to be "Well, if that's your attitude
we'll get someone else, thank you very much." Only the OP knows
whether he needs the business that much.

That "attitude" should put client's off. Depends on delivery beyond the
words. I wouldn't give it as an ultimatum but as a "it will be more
work to cleanup the code left by FP than to do the site over and I must
charge accordingly." All in the wording other Stan. Or is that me?
I've seen your posts here while lurking so you've been here longer. ;)

--
Stan McCann
Tularosa Basin chapter ABATE of NM Cooordinator, Alamogordo, NM
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) :( http://surecann.com/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

[Andy]

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 14:07:37 -0400, Stan Brown
<th************@fastmail.fm> wrote:

I submit that to "use Frontpage properly" a person needs to know
enough HTML that it would be easier just to edit the HTML!

This is exactly my take on it, but probably only because from my point
of view it's much easier to hand-edit.

One of my concerns is that originally I stressed the accessibility
issues on the client (a charity - therefore my charges are nominal) so
I don't want FrontPage putting in any &lt;font&gt; nonsense as Shawn
points out further in the thread - if indeed it does that.

I had hoped that FrontPage's standards compliance had progressed
sufficiently for a novice to be able to use it without producing
broken HTML. I guess that's the crux of my problem.

Andy

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Andy <[e-mail]> wrote:

One of my concerns is that originally I stressed the accessibility
issues on the client (a charity - therefore my charges are nominal) so
I don't want FrontPage putting in any &lt;font&gt; nonsense as Shawn
points out further in the thread - if indeed it does that.
The impact of <font> markup on accessibility is rather small. In fact, if
authors feel compelled to set font size, for example, it is _better_ to
use <font size="2"> than the CSS property font-size, unless they
understand things very well. That's because they will probably stick in
font-size: 10pt or something like that, thereby fixing the font size in a
manner that is not affected by IE's normal font size changing menu or
button.

Besides, FrontPage does not generate <font> markup unless the author does
something specific that makes it do so. The problem is that setting, for
example, the font face in a paragraph is most easily done via the font
selection menu on FP - the method that adds a CSS rule is less obvious.
I had hoped that FrontPage's standards compliance had progressed
sufficiently for a novice to be able to use it without producing
broken HTML.

If the original document is well-designed HTML and the novice only
changes texts and adds simple constructs according to instructions given,
I wouldn't expect FP to break the HTML. But admittedly FP, in its
resemblance to a text processing program, offers easy ways to produce
messy markup, and even markup that does not work well in WWW terms (which
is IMHO a more serious issue than the purity of markup).

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Jukka K. Korpela]

"Shawn K. Quinn" <sk*****@xevious.kicks-ass.net> wrote:

There are many other things than Frontpage they can use, but in order
for one to edit Web pages in any reasonable fashion, one needs to
know HTML.
At some point, yes. But they can learn it piecewise, switching to HTML
mode only when needed, or even editing HTML properties without reading
HTML markup as text.
Let me make it clear: Even if they are using Frontpage,
they need to know HTML.
It depends.
In particular they need to know that you make
a first-level heading with <h1>, not <font size="7"> or some other
deprecated or structurally misleading crap.

No, they just need to know that to write a first level heading, or to
change existing text into such a heading, they select "Heading 1" from a
menu.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Barry Pearson]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

"Shawn K. Quinn" <sk*****@xevious.kicks-ass.net> wrote:

There are many other things than Frontpage they can use, but in order
for one to edit Web pages in any reasonable fashion, one needs to
know HTML.

At some point, yes. But they can learn it piecewise, switching to HTML
mode only when needed, or even editing HTML properties without reading
HTML markup as text.

[snip]

I use Dreamweaver rather than Frontpage. My view of Dreamweaver is that, for
good pages, you still need to know something of HTML. But what you need is
really the concept of nested elements of various kinds, such as headers,
paragraphs, tables, etc. Plus the fact that they have values associated with
them. What you don't really need is knowledge of the detailed syntax, such as
pointy-brackets, tag names, attribute names, etc. And you can ignore some
things, and let Dreamweaver worry about them. For example, some of the content
of the head-block, closing-tags, strict nesting, etc.

I think this is quite a satisfactory target level of knowledge of HTML. It is
hard to avoid the concept of nested elements / document tree, because without
those you are shut off from so many important things. One, of course, is CSS,
which is quite dependent on that level of knowledge. (Although I think simple
CSS can duck it).

I don't know far that applies to Frontpage.

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

[Philipp Lenssen]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Andy <[e-mail]> wrote:

I had hoped that FrontPage's standards compliance had progressed
sufficiently for a novice to be able to use it without producing
broken HTML.

If the original document is well-designed HTML and the novice only
changes texts and adds simple constructs according to instructions
given, I wouldn't expect FP to break the HTML.

FrontPage server does e.g. replace &copy; with the (C) character --
without you lifting your finger, clicking anywhere, or telling it do so!

--
Google Blogoscoped
http://blog.outer-court.com

[Jukka K. Korpela]

"Philipp Lenssen" <in**@outer-court.com> wrote:

If the original document is well-designed HTML and the novice only
changes texts and adds simple constructs according to instructions
given, I wouldn't expect FP to break the HTML.

FrontPage server does e.g. replace &copy; with the (C) character --
without you lifting your finger, clicking anywhere, or telling it do
so!

I'm not sure of what you mean by "FrontPage server". Anyway, whatever we
might think of such replacement, they don't make the HTML broken.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[PeterMcC]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote in
<Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31>

"Philipp Lenssen" <in**@outer-court.com> wrote:

If the original document is well-designed HTML and the novice only
changes texts and adds simple constructs according to instructions
given, I wouldn't expect FP to break the HTML.

FrontPage server does e.g. replace &copy; with the (C) character --
without you lifting your finger, clicking anywhere, or telling it do
so!

I'm not sure of what you mean by "FrontPage server"...

I suspect that Philipp means a server with FrontPage Extensions installed...
but then, I suspect that you knew that already ;)

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

[Lars]

As other posters mention, ensure that your contact is for *only* the
initial design and implementation. Also, whatever your rates are for
maintenance and changes, make sure they know that your rates are at least
double to fix something the client fucked up by using MS-Frontpage.

Also, Dreamweaver is the more useful and more common web site development
tool. XMetal can be highly recommended. Lastly, Mozilla now has a rather
good editor.

-Lars

--
Lars
The Internet is for Everyone:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3271.txt?number=3271

[Rose]

>Re: client wants to use FrontPage

If the client wants to use FrontPage then so be it and bill them
accordingly......

Rose
http://members.aol.com/Roseb44170/home.html
"How did I ever get talked into this?"