Posted: 25 July 2008 at 8:03am | IP Logged

Something has dramatically changed on these forums. At one time there were many regulars willing to participate in answering questions. On top of that there were also many people that were not regulars who also would be willing to offer up an opinion or an answer to various questions.

Since the forums were re-opened there has been little if any participation from anyone willing to try and help others (regulars or not) I must admit that this is very disheartening to me.

So once more I will encourage anyone reading these forums..not only to ask questions...but more importantly to also try and help others out wherever you can by trying to answer some as well. The very few of us that are answering at all... need more of you to participate and help out. we cannot do it alone. Without more people trying to help by answering some questions...we will no longer have a community.

Posted: 25 July 2008 at 10:46am | IP Logged

Sorry..one other additional point..someone mentioned to me one time that there often appeared to be an answer to a question..and that is why they didn't answer.

My comment back was that there's no need to feel that one answer is always the best or only answer to a question. Many questions can be answered in many different ways...so don't be afraid to offer up an answer to any question..whether there has been any answer to them already or not!

Posted: 27 August 2008 at 3:32pm | IP Logged

Hi Joe,

I am an infrequent visitor (will try to do better) but on the most recent occasion have attempted answering a couple of questions with what I know to be useful information.

I am also a member of http://www.expression-web-designer-help.com/ which is a British site. I cannot help noticing that useful responses are in rather short supply there as well (although not to the same extent as here - it's a bigger Forum) and such responses as are received frequently do not make sense, are poorly explained or lacking in technical merit.

IMO much of the problem simply lies in the confusing nature of the subject. If I can be permitted expressing some harsh opinion, the Internet, the Web and Web design disciplines are a mess. Standards are constantly evolving and just to make things interesting, no two hosting servers seem to observe the same site management protocols. We have had html, dhtml, xhml, FP Extensions and now "down with Extensions". We have ftp (which was supposed to disappear but didn't), http, and https. We had DWT - but wait! - CSS has burst upon the scene to go along with it - everybody start over please. There's Java (which may or may not be executable on visitor machines so look out), VB, PHP which may or may not require a special "engine" to preview your pages, CGI, ASP, ASPX, ActiveX, OCX, .NET, and on it goes - each proving useful in some way but with its own universe of problems and unfavorable reactions with other things things when they collide.  Some of these are jetissoned with time while others hang on thanks to legacy support whose future is always uncertain.

I am a professional computer programmer, hardware designer and former networking specialist but have never come across anything in information/computing sciences so confusing and downright frustrating as Internet technology/"standards" and how to use these without incurring a great deal of pain. Great things are possible but I have done my best work by avoiding as much of this cr-p as possible. It might very well have been better had Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, IBM (take your pick) somehow managed to get complete control of the monster and then enforce a proprietary regime of access and development - warts and all - in the interests of some predictability and manageable repertoire of tools. Instead it has "grown like Topsy" with the result we now see.

The response problem you identify may have to do with people (however knowledgeable) hesitating to post something upon the reasonable suspicion it may prove wrong, obsolete by tomorrow, misleading or almost impossible to explain clearly. Certainly, this occurs to me when pondering many posted questions. You risk becoming embroild in a never-ending dialog and attempt at solving a problem no one has had in exactly the same way before. The simplest seeming difficulties in this environment could potentially take up the rest of your life to fix. Even an expert hesitates to jump in where angels fear to tread.

Personally, I know quite a bit about many of these things (although no expert - who is?) but 9 times out of 10 when reviewing a posted problem it is something that  so peculiar or needing so much research and experimentation to explore that I am likely just to move on. The last couple of days I posted one like this myself ... not one hit on Google as to a solution and so far no one here or in the other Forum can venture a guess. Can't say I blame them.

One of the moderators in the British Forum, suggests there are no "experts" in this field and that we are all like the blind trying to lead the blind. He has a point.

FWIW (and best wishes ;-))

JH

Posted: 28 August 2008 at 8:35am | IP Logged

Hi H,

Thank you so much on a couple of fronts..first of all thank you for any help and assistance you can offer up to others..that is the truly rewarding part of any forum..while getting help is very important..the chance to give some help and advice is what is rewarding!

Thank you as well for for your very thoughtful post here..you actually have given me a totally new perspective on why many people may be somewhat afraid to answer.

I have seen participation in many many forums/newsgroups etc. dwindle considerably. I had thought that some of it might be due to many people having shorter and shorter attention spans these days. Couple that with the ever growing number of sources on the web...and perhaps the end result is smaller numbers of people willing to try and offer responses. Rather than sounding somewhat cynical though..I do like your thoughts on it better!

There are a couple of main contributors to this forums that have run into some serious health and personal family situations that have eliminated or reduced their time and ability to be able to contribute as well..and that is certainly a part of it also.

You are a very Welcome member of our community..and I truly hope that you will continue to hang out with us as much as you would like!

Posted: 28 August 2008 at 11:41am | IP Logged

Thanks Joe,

I have some helpful materials prepared for my own use I may post links to once the dust settles on my problems relating to elimination of FP Extensions. I will definitely report findings regarding how things get sorted out. At this very moment SmartFTP is downloading my entire site to local disk where I can test some ideas you and others have suggested. Why am I not using EW? Because if there is any interruption in the connection, it gives up. SmartFP will requeue and retry indefinitely until it succeeds so I prefer it for a big transfer job.

On the bright side, EW is an all-round fantastic product. Without it (or FP before) I probably would not have bothered with Web work at all. I am beginning to see just how far ahead MS was in understanding the limitations of arising from various platforms and standards and tried to bring about some order (FPE) and real convenience (WYSIWYG).

Your point elsewhere about the value of a variety of responses to a problem is well-taken. No one should hesitate answering just because they think they have nothing new to add. Sometimes a change in wording is all it takes to make an idea clear. I mentioned spending some time in the British EW Forum. It's much bigger but they have problems too, which they admit. The consensus is that no one can really claim to be an expert when it comes to the mysteries of the Web although, to be sure, some know a lot more than others. Our only hope is to stick together and share as much as possible.

Best wishes,

H (Garth K.)

Posted: 29 August 2008 at 3:40pm | IP Logged

Hi Joe,

i dont know if im in the right place to ask this question. When i am doing some websites, im using frontpage and dreamweaver, I still have the installer of my dream weaver but i lost my office 2003 with MS frontpage CD installer. I just wondering where can I download frontpage2003 even just a trial version... I looked at microsoft website but i cant find frontpage 2003 download.

by the way, is expression just a higher version of frontpage?

Thank you

Kagemaru

Posted: 29 August 2008 at 5:37pm | IP Logged

Hi Kagemaru,

Welcome to the forums!

Sorry but FrontPage was never available as a download version..and because it has been discontinued there are no trials available either.

You probably can find a copy of it for sale on e-Bay but that might be about it.

Expression is the follow-on product to FrontPage..but is significantly different as well. It creates much more standards compliant code and .css than FrontPage..but many of the familiar bots are gone.

Posted: 30 August 2008 at 5:49pm | IP Logged

Expression Web is a whole new game and much more fun to use than FP. It supports CSS and this will multiply your productivity more than you can believe.

Forget FrontPage. If you no longer have an upgrade eligible product you must buy the full version of EW but it's not really that costly. Make sure you get Version 2 which supports PHP.

Best wishes,

JH

Posted: 05 September 2008 at 10:09am | IP Logged

Sorry but your "morderator" there is full of it. There are experts on Expression Web and even more more importantly there are experts on creating good cross platform websites written to modern standards and best practives. Expression Web after all is just a tool. The vast majoirity of quesions on Expression Web are really just web design/development questions and require a knowledge of CSS (espeically in those answering questions from people new to using CSS for presentation layer), HTML, ASP.NET, PHP and to a lesser degree multimedia/RIA on the web.

Go take a look at the MVP list for Expression, half of them were awarded for Expression Web and don't even use any of the rest of the suite. Then there are the authors of books on Expression Web like Jim Cheshire (works for Microsoft), Chris Leeds and myself. There are the folks at http://lynda.com http://totaltraining.com and http://starttoweb.com who teach classes on Expression Web, icluding how to migrate from FrontPage.

FWIW, I know several of these experts who have visited the forum you mentioned and will not visit any longer because attributions on their posts were removed when they provided correct information that contradicted something posted by another there (Jim Chesire is the one I'm talking about there) even though the information was left just credited to "anonymous". I haen't visited it in well over a year because of the blind leading the blind attitude that you mentioned.

In addition to this forum Microsoft maintains a pretty active forum on the Expression Community site. Personally, I hate the forum sofware they are using and prefer any other I've seen and that includes the FrontPage discussion web which should tell you how bad it is.

Anyway, there are experts out there. I specialize in front-end web development that's html, css and browser issues primarily. Chris Hascomb specializes in PHP. Jim Cheshire, Greg Beamer (C# MVP), Kevin Spencer, Ian Haynes, Christoph Sheeghans (sp?) specialize in ASP.NET. Kathy Wilber (not an MVP) is a good generalist in front end and ASP.NET issues. Pat Geary and Tina Clarke specialize in migrating FrontPage sites to Expression Web. I could go on but I think you get the idea.

Posted: 05 September 2008 at 10:12am | IP Logged

Expression Web is more like Dreamweaver than FrontPage. Microsoft discontinued FrontPage two years ago so the only way you will find it is on some place like eBay or a retailer who doesn't sell much and has old stock.

I'd suggest going ahead and moving to Expression Web. It won't break any bots you are using in FrontPage but has a greatly improved toolset. The competitive upgrade for Expression Web list includes Dreamweaver as well as any version of Office even without FrontPage so you would qualify for the upgrade pricing ($99 in the US but you can usually find it cheaper at amazon.com and other places.)

Posted: 06 September 2008 at 9:26am | IP Logged

Hi Cheryl

I think I was the moderator who made that comment, just after Expressions was launched in its BETA version. I wish that there was some method when the "quotes" are transferred the date was displayed.

MS now have the MVP Expressions, and Expressions itself is now into version 2. So I think its really come of age and not simply as an updated FP2003 but in its own right.

Having used FP, Expressions and Dreamweaver, along with serveral other WYSIWYG programs I now concentrate primarily on Expressions and Dreamweaver.

The fifty or so site I maintain that were built in FP2003 or now all expression based, with the remainder which are primarily database driven or are in PHP/MySQL are in Dreamweaver.

Posted: 04 March 2009 at 11:26am | IP Logged

Hi Folks,

I realize this is an old thread but I am bumping it as it still pertains. The participation of people who are attempting to answer questions it seems is limited to only a very few of us. I really would like to see more people trying to pitch in and offer something up for others as well.

I know you are out there because I can see the stats as far as daily visits go!

Please feel free to jump in occasionally helping others out!

Posted: 04 March 2009 at 6:00pm | IP Logged

Hi Joe

I've not really been using EW recently, the sites which are comming up for a rebuild, Caledonian Life for one were built using FP and these will be changed over to EW when the rebuild is started.

The majority of the sites I now manage are PHP/MySQL or DW based and to move these to EW would be a major job. One of the DW sites now has about 1000 pages and a blog.

So I try and contribute my two cents worth when I can.

Posted: 05 March 2009 at 12:48pm | IP Logged

Hi Mike,

Please don't misunderstand my intentions on buming this thread..I wanted to do that for other people to read that might be looking through here based on the title of it. My hope is that more people will participate that way.

I consider you to one of "the very few of us"

Your help here is noted and as always appreciated!

I just want to try and possibly motivate some others to do some of that as well!

Posted: 15 June 2009 at 10:51am | IP Logged

Mike,

Even when Expression Web was in beta there were still experts in the technology that underlies Expression Web. Many of the FrontPage MVPs were actively using it, contributing or at least attempting to getting bugs fixed and features implemented. Two FrontPgae MVPs were in the process of writing books on Expression Web during the beta. Microsoft could have moved several from FrontPage to Expression Web the day it was launched but that isn't the way MS runs the MVP program. (Ironically, the person who writes books for Microsoft Press on Expression Web is a Frontpage MVP. )

There is at least one very signficant and valuable contributor on the official MS Expression Web forum who almost never opens Expression Web using a different editor on a daily basis. I won't name the person because it isn't generally known that the only time the person opens Expression Web is when they need to check an answer they are posting.

Once you understand the technology the rest is just learning the interface, something that doesn't take that long in Expression Web. It takes somewhat longer in Dreamweaver because it is a more complex program with a larger feature set.

Like you I use Dreamweaver for many things and I even use both Dreamweaver and Expression Web on the same site. I like the Expression Web CSS tools better than the Dreamweaver CS 4 tools. I perfer Dreamweaver's ability to render server side includes in design view and use root relative links. As a result I'll use both on the same site in many cases. Ironically, I sometimes use Dreamweaver to publish an Expression Web site that is hosted on a Windows 2008 server because Expression Web won't connect to them (it chokes on the | character in the userid) if I don't feel like launching WS-FTP Pro or Filezilla. (MS has used Filezilla as the FTP program for their Expression Web labs at MIX, something I find very amusing.)

It was good to see support for PHP added to Expression Web v2 though it could be more feature rich (something that could be said for many other parts of Expression Web as well.) With v3 due out July 10, 2009 it will be interesting to see what is changed in that version. From what we've seen I expect there will be a wide variety of reactions. See: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/06/05/expressio n-web-3.aspx#9753202 for what information is currently available.

It is also interesting to compare Microsoft's SuperPreview with Adobe's Browserlabs. Both take a similar approach to troubleshooting browser issues but at least in the currently available previews (SuperPreview is a downloadable beta while Browserlabs runs online at Adobe labs)

Posted: 15 June 2009 at 7:36pm | IP Logged

Hi Cheryl

When I made that comment about the blind leading the blind, I was refering to some of the answers appearing on different forums and blogs when EWD was first launched in its beta version.

These guys who were answering the questions, had only just openned the EWD box themselves.

I still don't know enough about Expresssions to jump in and answer questions on it, I've never read a manual in my life, I've got a good library on how to do things. I feel the the guys at the software companies, Microsoft include, don't for some reason imagine that "ordinary" people buy their products.

So like thousands of other user, I use the books written by people who know what they are talking about when it comes the web design.

Dreamweaver publications tend to be the biggest volumes, while PHP are the smallest, yet which is the oldest.

One thing you mentioned was mixing Dreamweaver and Expressions, something I'd never of though of, usually I try not to mix software from different suppliers, though one thing Dreamweaver is better at by far than Expressions is in form handling, hopefully Microsoft will address this in version 3.

Posted: 15 June 2009 at 8:08pm | IP Logged

Mike,

I tend to agree with ou when you say:

"I feel he guys at the software companies, Microsoft includ, don't for some reason image that "ordinaray" people buy their products."

As for the Expression Web manual - there isn't one and the help file is pretty pathetic in many places. Either it has information that is wrong (like how to add a RSS feed when that feature was removed during beta 1) or sends you to MSDN ASP.NET pages, something nobody who isn't a developer will understand.

FWIW, I'm planning on an editor comparison when v3 is relesed between it and Dreamweaver CS 4 so if you have an areas you think would be a good section to include in the comparison let me know.