Review by carol irvin

I must say that Front Page 2002 is a dream program compared to the 2000 version. I had some very weird things happen with 2000 such as its not publishing to the web on the index page unless I also saved it in Notepad. All the bugs are gone in 2002 plus it is much easier to use. I use it for everything, rarely using Word, Office and so forth. My two major tools for editing and writing are Front Page and super Notepad instead. I am going to learn Dreamweaver next term at the college where I teach because I am finally ready to move on and learn more about professional web design. Besides, I can now read and write html so I am not as utterly dependent on Front Page as I once was. If you don’t know any html coding, the basis of all web pages, Front Page is the program for you. I also do all my image editing in Photoshop so don’t even need that function in Front Page. Dreamweaver is the industry standard instead of Front Page yet Front Page is the ordinary user’s program of choice. The reason for this is that you can know very little about computers and still make a website with Front Page. It even made publishing websites idiot proof by using Front Page Server extensions with many web host providers. Thus, one can totally skip learning ftp protocol by using Front Page server extensions instead. If someone wants to go professionally into web page design, this is not the product, Dreamweaver is. People who already are professionals in the computer industry or in web design tell me they don’t like Front Page. I think the reason is that since they don’t need (or want) Front Page to do their work for them, they desire a program which gives them a much freer hand. For the average computer user though, that is all pie in the sky, beyond their reach, and Front Page 2002 will more than do the job for them.