Freepages-Help-L Archives

Archiver > Freepages-Help > 2000-11 > 0975508928


From: "W. Wesley Groleau x4923" <>
Subject: Re: [FreeHelp] FP extensions
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 09:42:08 -0500


> My understanding is that FP extensions are only supported by Internet Explorer.
> So even on a server that supports them, the 35% of visitors to your site
> who use Netscape, or some other browser, will not *see* them.

Maybe some of them. But many of them are kind of like SSI - they are just
ways of getting the server to do more of the work. The server extensions
convert the FP codes into "added value" HTML. The advantage is the close
tie to the editor (FrontPage), so that the setup is easy (that depends on
what the meaning of easy is).

The disadvantage is the close tie to the editor. Why would someone
running a robust reliable Unix system, with a robust reliable Apache Web
server, having full access to the Webserver source code, want to change to
use some trade secret from a company for whom reliability is far from top
priority?

I sometimes help another Webmaster, who uses FrontPage for ease of getting
Web pages up. Unfortunately, it is VERY difficult to help him, because
the pages I receive in Netscape from the server are not the same as the
pages he uploads. The server extensions convert the FP codes into "added
value" HTML. So when I send him an update to a page, he has to figure out
what I actually changed, then figure out which file, and where in that
file, to manually insert the updates with Notepad. Even if I used FP
(you'd have to pay me to do that), I would have to have an complete copy
of his FP directories (updated every time he changed anything) in order to
avoid that problem. Once, another helper, who runs Unix, uploaded a new
Web page directly, and "broke" all the other pages that used FP
extensions!

In other words, using FP extensions makes it almost impossible to get help
from someone else, AND ties you to a Web host willing to support them.

Also, using FP (or NS composer) increases your chance of generating
non-standard HTML that only works in the same company's web browser.

--
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

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