Hiya buddy ...

As a part-time activity I develop websites for customers. I used to do this using MS Frontpage. Thanks to my move to Linux recently, my part-time working is on hold.

Anyone know any kick ass website designers similar to Frontpage. I've heard one can run Windows exe files using Wine. But, someone advised me that, for MS Frontpage - that approach doesn't work.


Thanks in advance mate!

Linux Archive

From a brief Google search for "linux" and "frontpage":

http://linux.wikia.com/wiki/Nvu

For what it's worth, I'd never use Frontpage or anything similar. Coding it by hand with an IDE is better, and gives you tighter code.

NVU is a defunct project and is no longer updated. KompoZer was released to replace NVU and has fixed bugs in the old NVU project. I would recommend downloading and using KompoZer since it seems to have a future.

Good catch...I only came across it from Google, don't use such things myself.

one that i have used is Quanta Plus. http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/
its designed to work with KDE. i code by hand so i don't know how the wysiwyg design is. but it's good for organizing project files. it supports syntax highlighting and auto-complete and a number of other things. php, css, javascript, and it integrates HTML tidy. i haven't used all its features. but it's worked for what i've needed.

In my limited reading, I found a substantial consensus that FrontPage is one of the worst development tools out there--I really hope there is never a Linux clone.

I favor the "smart editor" approach---eg Bluefish. You are much more in control, get better code, but you don't have to remember all the syntax.

Things like Dreamweaver are reported to run well under WINE.

I dont know what makes you think Front Page is the worst tool ever. I've been using it for close to 2 yrs now, and so far - it's been bliss!

If all you do with it is create a webpage using the graphical tools it seems fine. When you actually look at the code it creates it's a mess.

With respect to FrontPage output, any resemblance to html is entirely coincidental.

I have always been a fan of double checking the output any WYSIWYG html editors. For small projects I will just use a simple text editor (like Gedit or Kate). Larger projects I like using KompoZer.

It's all personal preference. Although my personal experience with using Frontpage is that it is OK. Not the best but not the worst either.

I do like Kate for its simplicity, syntax highlighting of XHTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP.

How well 'FrontPage' works depends on your version:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...ication&iId=15
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...rsion&iId=7208

So - read the special install instructions and try it out since you already have a copy.

The reasons people complain about FrontPage are numerous, but the top complaints are:
1. It generates awful code - don't ever try to edit with a text editor. This is especially true of the older versions which would waste many KB of storage space (and bandwidth!) by filling each page with unnecessary nested fonts/colors and other nested instructions. None but Microsoft could waste 11KB to create a plain web page with the words "Hello World".

2. MS does as it pleases. W3C conformance? Bah, what does the WWW Consortium know about standards.

I used frontpage for a long time too, and I used to think it was the best until I run into dreamweaver, and that's for WYSIWYG, like someone here pointed out, if you want a clean code use some sort of html editor, gedit is pretty good for coding, Gvim also very good

Ok I have read this thread all way through. I realize the HTML or what passes for HTML on front page is poor from a source code perspective. However that being said what package(s) and dependencies are available in linux that come close to emulating front page good bad or indifferent.

Thanks in advance

As it says above, Kompozer and Quanta Plus....