Two new tools will replace FrontPage, a Web authoring product for Web site designers and content creators. SharePoint Designer 2007, scheduled for release in the second half of 2006, will help IT workers create workflow-enabled SharePoint sites. The second product, Expression Web Designer, is intended for professional Web site designers and will compete with Dreamweaver from Macromedia, which was acquired by Adobe in Dec. 2005. Microsoft claims the new products are partly based on FrontPage; however, until more information is available, it is unknown how difficult it will be for existing FrontPage customers to learn and use the new tools.

FrontPage a Moving Target

Acquired in Microsoft's purchase of Vermeer Technologies in 1996, FrontPage's most important feature has been a graphical editor that allows nontechnical users, such as writers, graphic artists, and product managers, to create Web pages, insert graphics, and author basic HTML content. Initially used to author static HTML pages for both Windows and non-Windows Web sites, FrontPage also included platform-independent server components that helped users build more advanced features, such as searching, into Web sites.

FrontPage's most recent release (FrontPage 2003) took the product in a new direction. With that release, Microsoft deemphasized generic, platform-independent Web authoring in favor of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), a free add-on service to Windows Server 2003 for hosting team collaboration Web sites. Many of FrontPage 2003's new features required WSS and Windows Server 2003. The move was intended to increase the appeal of WSS, a significant new Microsoft technology, but came at the expense of Web site designers using FrontPage to target other Web platforms, such as Linux.

A New Approach

A Feb. 2006 announcement signals yet another change in direction. Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach to Web site design that FrontPage represented, Microsoft will split its Web authoring products to better align with specific user constituencies and the company's platform technologies.

Specifically, Microsoft will offer two new products for Web site design and creation:

SharePoint Designer 2007 will replace FrontPage as the tool for customizing WSS and SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) sites. The product is aimed at IT workers and corporate developers and will build on features introduced in FrontPage 2003, such as the ability to incorporate and display dynamic data (for example, from XML sources or Web Parts, server-side Web page components that can consume and display live data). In addition, the tool will support the forthcoming Windows Workflow Foundation (available with the release of Windows Vista, scheduled for the second half of 2006), which will allow workers to build workflow automation into WSS or SPS sites.

By providing a developer tool specifically for SharePoint products, Microsoft hopes to make those products more attractive to IT workers planning portal sites, which could help it gain a step on competitor products such as SAP's NetWeaver Enterprise Portal.

Expression Web Designer 2007 targets general Web site designers, many of whom today favor tools such as Dreamweaver. (Expression Web Designer is one of three planned products that Microsoft will ship under the Expression brand. The others are a graphics editor called Graphic Designer and a tool for designing Windows user interfaces, called Interactive Designer.) Web Designer will offer features familiar to FrontPage users, such as Web page layout and the ability to include dynamic data (such as XML data sources) in their sites and to format those data for display. Furthermore, Microsoft has indicated that Web Designer will be integrated with Visual Studio and will support ASP.NET 2.0 features such as master pages, which help site designers and developers define a common layout for all pages in a site.

Such capabilities could reduce friction between Web site designers and site developers, such as corporate developers working on self-service intranet applications, allowing the latter to more easily extend (adding business logic, for example) site designs or prototypes built by Web designers. In turn, this strengthens Microsoft's hand against competitor platforms, such as the Apache Web server running on Linux; if Microsoft attracts a company's Web designers and developers to its tools, that company is more likely to choose the Microsoft Web platform (e.g., Windows, Internet Information Services, and SQL Server).

Considerations

Although details on the new products are hazy (public betas are not yet available for SharePoint Designer or Web Designer), several issues bear consideration for FrontPage users.

For example, it seems likely that Expression Web Designer will complete the move away from platform-independence that started with FrontPage 2003. Web Designer is intended for designing browser-independent Web sites and its support for standards like HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and Extensible HTML will allow users to author basic Web pages that run on non-Windows platforms. However, the tool's focus on ASP.NET suggests that users creating sites of any sophistication will target the Microsoft platform.

In addition, current users of FrontPage will certainly face a learning curve to become familiar with the new tools. To ease the transition for those users, Microsoft has indicated that it will support FrontPage through June 2008 and provide FrontPage users guidance on moving to either SharePoint Designer or Web Designer. However, until Microsoft releases betas of SharePoint Designer and Web Designer or makes more information available, it is impossible to know how easy or difficult that transition will be.

Availability, Pricing, and Resources

A public beta of SharePoint Designer is planned for the first half of 2006. Microsoft has said the product will ship in the second half of the year and carry a US$300 price tag. No firm date for a beta of Web Designer has been announced yet, but Microsoft is likely to provide more details at MIX '06, a Microsoft conference for Web developers scheduled for late Mar. 2006. Microsoft has not yet announced a ship date or pricing for the product.

The press release announcing the demise of FrontPage is at www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/feb06/02-15Designer.mspx.

The Microsoft SharePoint site is www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/default.mspx.

The Expression Web Designer home page is www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/web_designer/default.mspx.

For more information about FrontPage 2003, see "FrontPage 2003 Targets Data-Driven Web Sites" on page 14 of the Oct. 2003 Update.

The Expressions Graphics Designer (previously code-named Acrylic) is described in "Acrylic Targets Graphics Professionals" on page 22 of the July 2005 Update.

The Windows Workflow Foundation is described in "Workflow Strategy Takes Shape" on page 15 of the Nov. 2005 Update.