Switching from FrontPage to Dreamweaver

[Sooner Born Sooner Bred]

Disclaimer: Yes, I know FrontPage sucks, but for now that's what I have.

Anyway, I want to make the switch to a less sucky program and Dreamweaver has been recommended. How tricky will it be to get my company's pages converted to DW? We have more than 1K pages (including various documents).

[sooner_born_1960]

I may be way off base, but isn't the end result just html?

[sooner_born_1960]

OK. I did a little searching and I guess it's not that simple. What with front page extensions and whatnot.

[Sooner Born Sooner Bred]

Yeah, FrontPage inserts a lot of garbage.

I like the way our site looks, but I'd like to increase its functionality/usability.

[sooner_born_1960]

Does this help?

http://www.jsm-hosting.com/technical-info/convert-frontpage-dreamweaver.html

[TopDaugIn2000]

I don't know how difficult the conversion would be, but I LOVE dreamweaver. it's so easy to use.

[bluedogok]

I tried Front Page once, I use Dreamweaver but I still sometimes go back to an old program that just color codes the HTML tags.

[mdklatt]

I tried Front Page once, I use Dreamweaver but I still sometimes go back to an old program that just color codes the HTML tags.

Like Dreamweaver?

[mdklatt]

I may be way off base, but isn't the end result just html?


I'm not sure what Front Page spews out, but it's guaranteed to only work right in Internet Explorer.

[mdklatt]

Disclaimer: Yes, I know FrontPage sucks, but for now that's what I have.

Anyway, I want to make the switch to a less sucky program and Dreamweaver has been recommended. How tricky will it be to get my company's pages converted to DW? We have more than 1K pages (including various documents).


Dreamweaver won't have any problems reading stuff created by Front Page--it's all just HTML--but getting rid of all the extra crap that Front Page inserts might be impossible. Even once you get down to standard HTML, I bet the page layouts are dependent on tables. This is strongly discouraged nowadays for several reasons. If you want the old web site to just work in a short amount of time, just suck everything into to Dreamweaver and hope for the best. But if you want a quality, accessible, standards-complaint web site you might be better off coding it from scratch, using the design of the current web site as much as possible.

[Sooner_Bob]

Link (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14031&sliceId=2)

Dreamweaver MX 2004

Import Front Page Site Wizard for Dreamweaver MX 2004: Use the step-by-step Wizard (http://kb.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?view=sn106&extid=1009902) to import existing FrontPage webs and setup remote publish information in just minutes, using settings familiar to FrontPage users.

Cleanup FrontPage HTML Sitewide for Dreamweaver MX 2004 (http://kb.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?view=sn106&extid=1010001): Remove extraneous code - such as WebBots, navigation-related comments and META tags - which are all added by FrontPage.

Publish Web Command for Dreamweaver MX 2004 (http://kb.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?view=sn106&extid=1009960): This extension replicates the publishing capabilities of FrontPage. It allows you to directly connect to any FrontPage Server using the Dreamweaver site window and publish files using HTTP instead of FTP.

[BigRedJed]

Notepad.

YWIA.

[Sooner_Bob]

Or the freeware version of Dreamweaver nvu (http://www.nvu.com)

[Sooner Born Sooner Bred]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Like I said earlier, I like the look of our current site. I'd like to add some drop-downs and make it more 508 compliant. I'll probably end up having to set up the templates and import text and graphics. It will take a lot of time but it will be the best way, right?

[sooner_born_1960]

Don't be shy about budgeting resources to this project. I'm thinking $600,000 over nine months.

[Sooner Born Sooner Bred]

Don't be shy about budgeting resources to this project. I'm thinking $600,000 over nine months.Um no.

[Sooner_Bob]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Like I said earlier, I like the look of our current site. I'd like to add some drop-downs and make it more 508 compliant. I'll probably end up having to set up the templates and import text and graphics. It will take a lot of time but it will be the best way, right?


I don't like using the templates in Dreamweaver, but that's because I usually use the coders view rather than the design view. But they are quick and dirty, and probably the easiest way to deal with something like this.

[Sooner_Bob]

This might prove helpful to some: Web Developer's Field Guide (http://webdevelopersfieldguide.com/)