Use FP 2003 on a site developed with other software?

[Serious_Practitioner]

Hello, all, and thank you in advance for your assistance and opinions.

I may have to begin taking a fairly active part in the management of a small
Web site. I just recently acquired a copy of FP 2003, and I have a couple of
questions that I'd like to ask before I break something! I know enough about
this to believe that the site is fairly simple, having made small changes to
the site with text editors and the like, but I'm concerned about a couple of
things.

1. The site has been developed and/or maintained using Dreamweaver,
primarily. Currently, the fellow who is doing
the work is using NetObjects Top Page, by IBM. The question that comes
to my mind is - what conflicts might or
will be caused by my beginning to use FP 2003?
2. If one creates or changes a page with FP, in these circumstances, is it
necessary to republish the entire site, or can
one page simply be moved to the server? I detect some differing
information about that in one of the other newsgroups.
3. If I use FP, how likely is it that the next person will have problems
using a different product?

I'm certainly interested in other comments, cautions and information as
well. Thank you again.


Steve E.

 

[Murray]

Net Object Fusion creates the most grotesque HTML I have ever seen. Be
prepared. If you do NOT know HTML then you are in for a treat.

A Dreamweaver page should be a piece of cake for you to bring into FP. Its
code is clean and tidy (mostly). The one thing to be aware of is this - if
the pages are under control of a Dreamweaver template, and if that template
was created using Dreamweaver MX or Dreamweaver MX2004, then you are in
trouble, since FP cannot understand DMX/DMX2004 template markup.

I hope that nobody in the current round of 'ownership' will be using
anything other than FP to maintain this site - that's where other troubles
will arise, too - two simultaneous editors using different authoring
products.

3. If I use FP, how likely is it that the next person will have problems
using a different product?

It would entirely depend on how good you are. A good coder can use FP in
such a way that the page is nearly authoring system agnostic.

 

[Serious_Practitioner]

Hi, Murray, and many thanks for your informative reply.

I thought that some of the HTML on the newer pages looked sort of, um,
exotic, but I don't really have the experience to make that judgement. And
I'm less worried about conflicts - I know they will occur, but hopefully not
horrible ones.

I do have a question about one sentence in your reply. You say that a good
coder can use FP and produce a page that is authoring system agnostic. I'm
probably not that good, but I learn fast...where can I get some pointers on
how to do that, or is this truly one of the trial-and-error things?

Again, thanks.


Steve E.

 

[Murray]

where can I get some pointers on

how to do that, or is this truly one of the trial-and-error things?

Just learn HTML and CSS. Let those be the underlying understanding that
guides your use of FP. If you are comfortable with both of these
(comfortable is all you need - expert is not necessary) then you will have
no problems.

I would scour the net for tutorials on both - you could start at
http://www.bignosebird.com and go from there....

 

[arcarius]

Hello, all, and thank you in advance for your assistance and opinions.

I may have to begin taking a fairly active part in the management of a small
Web site. I just recently acquired a copy of FP 2003, and I have a couple of
questions that I'd like to ask before I break something! I know enough about
this to believe that the site is fairly simple, having made small changes to
the site with text editors and the like, but I'm concerned about a couple of
things.

1. The site has been developed and/or maintained using Dreamweaver,
primarily. Currently, the fellow who is doing
the work is using NetObjects Top Page, by IBM. The question that comes
to my mind is - what conflicts might or
will be caused by my beginning to use FP 2003?
2. If one creates or changes a page with FP, in these circumstances, is it
necessary to republish the entire site, or can
one page simply be moved to the server? I detect some differing
information about that in one of the other newsgroups.
3. If I use FP, how likely is it that the next person will have problems
using a different product?

I'm certainly interested in other comments, cautions and information as
well. Thank you again.


Steve E.

Steve,

One of the things that the person who created your site with Dreamweaver
can do for you is to export the stuff that he did to FrontPage. One of
the feature that Macromedia did was added the ability to export to
FrontPage. Check to see if he can do this for you. This will minimize
the chances of incompatibility with codes that Dreamweaver are able to
handle that FrontPage doesn't.

Arcarius 76

 

[Murray]

One of the feature that Macromedia did was added the ability to export to

FrontPage.

Who told you this?

Dreamweaver writes plain HTML and javascript. All you would have to do
would be to create your new site in FP and import the files. I wouldn't
expect ANY codes that FP couldn't handle EXCEPT DMX level template markup.

Now - DW does have the capability to export the files and strip all that
template markup - perhaps that is what you are referring to? But this is
not a specific "export to FP" capability.