[WEB4LIB] Converting FrontPage 2000 to DreamWeaver 3

[Andrew Mutch]

As several people have noted, the HTML from FP2000 should be fairly easy to clean
up.  In fact, I've found that generally speaking, "plain" pages created in FP2000
have fairly "clean" HTML.

Where you run into problems with FP2000 is when people begin using themes and other
FP specific features [this is what your IT person refers to as the proprietary
code].  FP2000 dumps all of the graphics and stylesheets associated with these
themes into various folders.  If you don't bring these folders over into the new web
environment, the pages created with the Themes, etc. are not going to display
properly.  As far as I can tell, nothing about the graphics or the style sheets are
"proprietary" -- they display fairly consistently between IE and Netscape[as that
goes].  If you have created pages with IE-specific features or relying on SSI
[include pages, etc.], you may start running into real problems.

Also, once you have removed these pages from the FP environment, that you won't be
able to modify the "themes" without going into those "themes" folders and editing
the style sheets.  FP2000 also "automatically" generates the graphics used by the
"navigational bars" and some of the other FP web tools.  If you change the order of
those elements, you'll be in the situation of having to create new graphics where FP
previously created them for you.

I looks like there are 3 approaches to this problem:

1)  Copy over the FP pages and all the associated folders and use Dreamweaver 3,
knowing that some of the features may have to be modified or scrapped along the
way.  Also, realize that down the road, the FP model may lead to problems [no
centralized style sheets, etc.]

2)  Run the FP pages through one of the tools mentioned and use Dreamweaver 3.
Again, realize that some of the features may have to go by the wayside and that you
may face administrative issues down the road.

3)  Create a new set of pages and copy the "content" only from FP into Dreamweaver
3.  This is the most labor-intensive but it does have the advantage of allowing you
to define the features up-front and deal with some administrative issue as well.

Good luck with all of that!

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI

jpurce at dwp.ci.la.ca.us wrote:

> Our new director wants us to redesign our web page using DreamWeaver 3. Our old
> pages were done in FrontPage 2000, and our IT person says she's going to have to
> redo them from scratch. FrontPage uses proprietary codes for graphics (buttons,
> navigation bars, etc.) which DreamWeaver can't recognize. She called DreamWeaver
> tech support, and they claimed it wouldn't work.
>
> Have any of you tried converting FrontPage to DreamWeaver? Would it be easier
> just to start over?