Monday, July 04, 2005
And Begorrah?
No real connection, just like the joke.
What the heck, I bitch about everything else on this site, let's have a go at FrontPage 2003. Why not? Doesn't everyone give Microsoft grief? So, anyway, I recently upgraded to the whole Office 2003 suite. I am a subscriber to what Microsoft calls it's "Action Pack" which basically consists of ten licenses (and the CDs)for most everything they make. It's actually a whole lot cheaper than upgrading and if they come up with a new version they mail it right out to me. My quick and dirty reviews follow:
Microsoft Office Word is almost exactly like all previous versions, except for the "reading view" which gives you a two-page view of your document as if it were a bound book, and you can flip the pages. It's actually a nice feature. There's also a new online research function built in, but as I've been using search engines for ten years it doesn't really add a heck of a lot. Nice though.
Microsoft Office Excel is virtually the same program as the 2000 or XP versions. Nothing wrong with that, but there's no reason to upgrade either. Except for the one thing I really like about all of these programs: they load about five times faster than previous versions. So it's okay too.
Microsoft Office PowerPoint is almost exactly identical to PowerPoint XP, which has more bells and whistles and a different look than the 2000 version. It's still fun to mess with and seems to be completely backward compatible, so it's good.
Microsoft Office Access hasn't changed a lot from a user point of view. The interface looks different, but if you use Access you won't have any trouble with the conversion.
There are also communication and collaboration tools that I never use, so I'll let Microsoft do their own marketing for them. Which brings us to Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. I have a web page, the link is to the left of this page. If you've looked at it in the past couple of weeks, though, it won't be different if you look again. And why not, I hear you ask. Thought you'd never.
Everything in the new version of FrontPage works a lot the same. Some things are a lot better, like the ability to split the screen so both the WYSIWYG and code shows at the same time. But, the rub is that my common borders have links in them which do not work once I open the site in the new version. I've tried taking them off and rebuilding from scratch, modifying them various ways, but nothing has made them work. As this pretty much scotches the reasons I use the FrontPage themes in the first place, I'm frankly thinking of getting a different program, maybe DreamWeaver, which I hear is just as easy to use and less likely to cause problems.
Drat, drat, drat, I say.
What the heck, I bitch about everything else on this site, let's have a go at FrontPage 2003. Why not? Doesn't everyone give Microsoft grief? So, anyway, I recently upgraded to the whole Office 2003 suite. I am a subscriber to what Microsoft calls it's "Action Pack" which basically consists of ten licenses (and the CDs)for most everything they make. It's actually a whole lot cheaper than upgrading and if they come up with a new version they mail it right out to me. My quick and dirty reviews follow:
Microsoft Office Word is almost exactly like all previous versions, except for the "reading view" which gives you a two-page view of your document as if it were a bound book, and you can flip the pages. It's actually a nice feature. There's also a new online research function built in, but as I've been using search engines for ten years it doesn't really add a heck of a lot. Nice though.
Microsoft Office Excel is virtually the same program as the 2000 or XP versions. Nothing wrong with that, but there's no reason to upgrade either. Except for the one thing I really like about all of these programs: they load about five times faster than previous versions. So it's okay too.
Microsoft Office PowerPoint is almost exactly identical to PowerPoint XP, which has more bells and whistles and a different look than the 2000 version. It's still fun to mess with and seems to be completely backward compatible, so it's good.
Microsoft Office Access hasn't changed a lot from a user point of view. The interface looks different, but if you use Access you won't have any trouble with the conversion.
There are also communication and collaboration tools that I never use, so I'll let Microsoft do their own marketing for them. Which brings us to Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. I have a web page, the link is to the left of this page. If you've looked at it in the past couple of weeks, though, it won't be different if you look again. And why not, I hear you ask. Thought you'd never.
Everything in the new version of FrontPage works a lot the same. Some things are a lot better, like the ability to split the screen so both the WYSIWYG and code shows at the same time. But, the rub is that my common borders have links in them which do not work once I open the site in the new version. I've tried taking them off and rebuilding from scratch, modifying them various ways, but nothing has made them work. As this pretty much scotches the reasons I use the FrontPage themes in the first place, I'm frankly thinking of getting a different program, maybe DreamWeaver, which I hear is just as easy to use and less likely to cause problems.
Drat, drat, drat, I say.
