FP2003 and DWT requirements?

[Jim Cheshire]

Hi Jim,

1) Live editing can be safer than off-line editing, because you only
have one version to worry about, it also allows proof reading by
simply hitting the refresh button. We have a world-wide operation,
and users need to see right-away (and collaborate) with what's
happening. They are not inside our firewall and don't have NetBIOS
access, so everything has to work over HTTP. There are also problems
with ASP and DATA driven pages not working properly unless they're
being served from a web server. I find this outweighs the worry of
someone making a typo and hitting "save". In two years of running
live we've never regretted an authoring action.

No serious Web applications consist of only one copy. I work with
enterprise level customers frequently and none of them would ever even
consider such a thing. If you're doing any ASP development, surely you
develop, test, stage, and then move to production, don't you?

--
Jim Cheshire
JIMCO Software
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcoaddins.com

The premiere add-in and software source
for Microsoft FrontPage.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jim,

Yes, we've been working live for over two years and the company before
was the same. Imagine you are the backward-thinking type person who has
to press "publish" every time they change a few sentences. Thousands of
files (plus _vti_bin), both locally and remotely have to be
enumerated, and date/time stamps have to be compared, the user then gets
"file XYZ has been changed by user ABC, are you sure you want to
overwrite" on some dynamic files or collaborative files, this is insane.

Here's a conversation to consider:

Boss:- I told the secretary to update our link page at 10:00am and our
assistant director has just phoned from China saying it's NOT updated.

Web_Guy:- Ah, well that's because it's not been "published" yet. Before
we had Frontpage extensions we used to have to work off-line with silly
"disk based webs" and then publish to the target server.

Boss:- But I thought you said we HAD Frontpage extensions??

Web_Guy:- We do.

Boss:- So what the hell is going on, maybe you don't want this job?

Web_Guy:- I'll get it published now.

Boss:- We are losing competitive advantage, our Chinese friends say they
can update INSTANTLY day or night, so why are we lagging behind?

Web_Guy:- Oh dear.

This Web_Guy is an idiot with no sense of how to stay on top in big
business. It's no wonder China is gaining competitive advantage.

Luckily, I'm not that Web_Guy, and that's why I get the big contracts.

Everything is "live" now, and even Microsoft are pushing the "real time"
concept in recent SDKs.

 

[Jim Cheshire]

Hi Jim,

Yes, we've been working live for over two years and the company before
was the same. Imagine you are the backward-thinking type person who
has to press "publish" every time they change a few sentences.

I am talking about Web applications. A competent application developer
would never think of changing anything and deploying it without testing, and
that same applciation developer would never, ever consider having only one
copy of the application; the live app.

I suspect that your confusion surrounding my point is that your concept of
Web development revolves around static HTML applications while mine revolves
around something a bit more complex.

Your scenario, but the way, is just not realistic. That's not the way
things work in enterprise environments. Trust me.

--
Jim Cheshire
JIMCO Software
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcoaddins.com

The premiere add-in and software source
for Microsoft FrontPage.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jim,

I am talking about Web applications.

Well that's strange, because I thought this newsgroup was related to
using Frontpage and it's extensions? In other words web "authoring", not
web "development".

I suspect that your confusion surrounding my point is that your concept of
Web development revolves around static HTML applications while mine revolves
around something a bit more complex.

As I clearly explained in my earlier posts, we are moving from ASP.NET
to Frontpage with static pages.

Your scenario, but the way, is just not realistic. That's not the way
things work in enterprise environments. Trust me.

Sorry, but I don't trust you on this. We have users all over the world
who have to collaborate on a live website. I've already explained why
having a disk based web for each user would be slow and unrealistic. Not
to mention the file-locking and firewalls getting in the way. HTTP was
designed to allow single PUT operations. Microsoft's extensions were the
first to fully exploit this on both Windows and UNIX. I was there back
in the days of Frontpage 1.1 and promoted this to corporates. If you
want the competitive edge, you run live - it's that simple. The other
side of this is related to the growth of so-called "home working". Many
corporates won't pay for proper kit to be installed at the remote
location, so there needs to be a way for the remote-virus-infested user
to be able to safely upload pages via something like XP-SP2's firewall.
Try that with a "disk based web" and see how far you get.

 

[Jim Cheshire]

Hi Jim,


Well that's strange, because I thought this newsgroup was related to
using Frontpage and it's extensions? In other words web "authoring",
not web "development".

It's funny because I was, just this afternoon, talking to the guy who
manages the busiest Web site in the world. I can assure you that if I had
said any of the things you've said here, he would have laughed me out of the
room.

I think we're going to have to just stop here. We're not speaking the same
language.

--
Jim Cheshire
JIMCO Software
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcoaddins.com

The premiere add-in and software source
for Microsoft FrontPage.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jim,

It's funny because I was, just this afternoon, talking to the guy who
manages the busiest Web site in the world. I can assure you that if I had
said any of the things you've said here, he would have laughed me out of the
room.

Can you clarify? Are you saying there's difficulty understanding the
difference between web "authroing" and a web "application"? I made it
clear from the start I was referring to web authoring.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

FYI: FP can be used to do both web authoring and web development. Really there is no difference.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Thomas,

FYI: FP can be used to do both web authoring and web development. Really there is no difference.

I think you'll find there's BIG difference. Let's take ASP.NET as an
example. Using Visual Studio, you can drag controls onto the design
page, and set their properties based on their type libraries. You can
then "code behind" the design page form, and this code file is
automatically "linked" to the form. You can then compile your code and
use the debugger to trace any problems with it. You can not do any of
this in Frontpage. You could create the pages manually, and upload them,
but it would be very tedious, and you can't build the DLLs in the /bin
folder, and you can't debug them.

Visual Studio can publish changes via the Frontpage extensions which is
very handy if working remotely.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

It's funny because I was, just this afternoon, talking to the guy who
manages the busiest Web site in the world. I can assure you that if I had
said any of the things you've said here, he would have laughed me out of the
room.

The "busiest" site in the world? I wonder which site that is, and
whether they use Windows Server 2003 and Frontpage? My guess is that
they don't!

 

[Tom Pepper Willett]

"My guess is that they don't!"
What do you base your guess on, other than trolling this newsgroup?


| Jim Cheshire wrote:
|
| >>Well that's strange, because I thought this newsgroup was related to
| >>using Frontpage and it's extensions? In other words web "authoring",
| >>not web "development".
|
| > It's funny because I was, just this afternoon, talking to the guy who
| > manages the busiest Web site in the world. I can assure you that if I
had
| > said any of the things you've said here, he would have laughed me out of
the
| > room.
|
| The "busiest" site in the world? I wonder which site that is, and
| whether they use Windows Server 2003 and Frontpage? My guess is that
| they don't!
|
| --
| Gerry Hickman (London UK)

 

[Jim Cheshire]

"My guess is that they don't!"
What do you base your guess on, other than trolling this newsgroup?

Yeah, Tom. You can probably guess which site I'm talking about. My buddy
was recently in town, and yesterday I took him fishing. As we were plugging
a bank, I told him a bit about this conversation. He almost laughed himself
out of the boat.

--
Jim Cheshire
JIMCO Software
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcoaddins.com

The premiere add-in and software source
for Microsoft FrontPage.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

"My guess is that they don't!"
What do you base your guess on, other than trolling this newsgroup?

Well instead of speculating, the sensible thing to do is to clarify
which internet site we are talking about? It's then very easy to
establish which server (and client) technology they are using.

Let's assume it's Google for a minute; if so, they certainly do not use
Windows Server 2003, it would be absurd, and the site would fall over
within minutes. The bigger sites tend to use UNIX or Linux.

Microsoft's own Hotmail service had to be moved from Windows to Unix a
few years back because Windows wasn't up to the job.

For corporate sites, Windows and IIS are very good, and can be
integrated with Acrive Directory enabling Kerberos authentication, but
if we're talking the "busiest" site, there's no way it's using Frontpage
or Windows.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

How about we take Classic ASP as an example...

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Stefan B Rusynko]

Nonsense
- why don't you check your facts before you make claims
Hotmail.com is running on Windows 2003
And I guess Microsoft.com is not a "busy site" because it is also running on Windows 2003

As for Google, yes it is on Linux but that decision in many cases is a commercial one, not a technical one

And last search I did listed the busiest Web sites as belonging to AOL Time Warner, Microsoft and Yahoo

--




| Tom Pepper Willett wrote:
| > "My guess is that they don't!"
| > What do you base your guess on, other than trolling this newsgroup?
|
| Well instead of speculating, the sensible thing to do is to clarify
| which internet site we are talking about? It's then very easy to
| establish which server (and client) technology they are using.
|
| Let's assume it's Google for a minute; if so, they certainly do not use
| Windows Server 2003, it would be absurd, and the site would fall over
| within minutes. The bigger sites tend to use UNIX or Linux.
|
| Microsoft's own Hotmail service had to be moved from Windows to Unix a
| few years back because Windows wasn't up to the job.
|
| For corporate sites, Windows and IIS are very good, and can be
| integrated with Acrive Directory enabling Kerberos authentication, but
| if we're talking the "busiest" site, there's no way it's using Frontpage
| or Windows.
|
| --
| Gerry Hickman (London UK)

 

[Jim Cheshire]

Nonsense
- why don't you check your facts before you make claims
Hotmail.com is running on Windows 2003
And I guess Microsoft.com is not a "busy site" because it is also
running on Windows 2003

The busiest Web application in the world is Windows Update. As far as the
busiest traditional .com sites, AOL ranks highest because of the sheer
number of subscribers. MSN ranks below it and Microsoft.com is third.
(Last I checked.) Windows Update dwarfs them all in sheer number of
requests and throughput, and yes, it does run on Windows Server 2003 and SQL
Server.

As for the "they don't use FrontPage" comment, this is yet another example
of ignorance. FrontPage has nothing to do with the scalability of a Web
site.

--
Jim Cheshire
JIMCO Software
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcoaddins.com

The premiere add-in and software source
for Microsoft FrontPage.

 

[Jim Cheshire]

I should add that both Windows Update and Microsoft.com have a higher
percentage of uptime than anyone else in the industry. Gerry's comments
about "they sure don't run on Windows" is just laughable and shows that his
criticism is based upon an anti-Microsoft bias.

--
Jim Cheshire
JIMCO Software
http://www.jimcosoftware.com
http://www.jimcoaddins.com

The premiere add-in and software source
for Microsoft FrontPage.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Stefan,

- why don't you check your facts before you make claims
Hotmail.com is running on Windows 2003

If you read my post, it does say "a few years back".

As for Google, yes it is on Linux but that decision in many cases is a commercial one, not a technical one

And last search I did listed the busiest Web sites as belonging to AOL Time Warner, Microsoft and Yahoo

Do you know anywhere to check latest stats?

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jim,

The busiest Web application in the world is Windows Update. As far as the
busiest traditional .com sites, AOL ranks highest because of the sheer
number of subscribers.

That's interesting about Windows update being the busiest. I hadn't
really thought about it (as you say it's not a traditional .com site).

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jim,

I should add that both Windows Update and Microsoft.com have a higher
percentage of uptime than anyone else in the industry. Gerry's comments
about "they sure don't run on Windows" is just laughable and shows that his
criticism is based upon an anti-Microsoft bias.

I don't know about uptime, but Microsoft's choice to run Server 2003
(combined with not knowing how to optimize graphics) certainly does
explain why all their sites are so SLOW. Looking at the overall picture
of world-wide web hosting in the context of "IIS on Windows" vs "Apache
on Unix and Linux". This page on netcraft shows the stats over the last
10 years:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html

Scroll down to the second graph which shows Apache way ahead of Microsoft.

Back in 2002 (just before Nimda), Microsoft were kicking some serious
ass, but the bungling security, vendor tie-in and lack of open-source
caused some serious damage to their market penetration.

It would not surprise me if we see a change in this trend, but I don't
think it will be soon.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Thomas,

How about we take Classic ASP as an example...

Now we're talking!

I agree Classic ASP and Frontpage make an excellent development system.
It's a shame .NET has ruined this powerful, faster, less-bloated,
less-proprietary way of doing things.

I also find Frontpage works well using Perl/CGI with Apache/Linux, but
Microsoft are determined to get rid of this capability as soon as
possible - that's why the new FP2003 extensions are not available for
anything other than Windows Server 2003.

The bottom line, is that Microsoft resources relating to anything other
than .NET will become very scarce - this is already happening on MSDN.
Unfortunately, this means Frontpage can no longer be considered a
serious client for developing web applications