Updated: July 9, 2020 (March 6, 2006)

  Analyst Report

FrontPage Becomes SharePoint Authoring Tool

My Atlas / Analyst Reports

1,043 wordsTime to read: 6 min

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.

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