Re:try MS FrontPage (Score 1)

I'm responsible for maintaining about 15,000 web pages, and we use FrontPage to do it. And we have conflicting religions here too (Mac, PC).

I would recommend FP if site management and end-user ease are concerns. If your concern is WYSIWYG, then you are an idiot. There is no such thing... and it's WAAAYYYY too soon to start using CSS/DHTML.

That being said, let me dispell a couple myths stated in this thread.

1. Frontpage can't be used for 'dynamic' pages. False. I use frontpage to create and edit ASPs, and it *does* fight you sometimes, but if you have any competence at all you'll be able to overcome the challanges advanced development poses.
   
   
2. You can't manage large webs with it. False. If you have clients and servers with enough horse power you can handle webs up to ~1000 pages. This doesn't sound like much, until you realize you can have hundreds of webs on one server -- each with a thousand pages.
   
   
3. If you have a site with lots of #includes FP is no good. False. FP has an 'include' bot that lets you create pages for inclusion, *visually*. If you are a crafty developer, this can save TONS of work. You can even refer to a common page for background settings and such. And no, FP extensions don't need to be installed on the production server to use these elements in design stages.
   
   
4. FP messes up your HTML. False. FP has (had up to 98) two components: the editor and the explorer. Explorer is mostly for site management, and the editor is configurable. In fact, at one point I had FP setup to open all graphics with Photoshop, HTML with the Netscape composer, .htm files with FP Editor, ASPs with Textpad, and PDF files with Acrobat. All by just clicking the files. Point being, if you want to write your own HTML, FP will let you... and won't touch your code.

Ok, that's the good news, heres the bad:

• FP 98 sucks. We *still* use FP 97 (but FP 98 server extensions) because FP 98 uses CSS. For example, FP 97 uses the FONT tag while 98 uses CSS. Pages created with Editor 98 don't *look* right under navigator 3.
  
  
• FP 98 J/JavaScript code is just as bad as all the other code spewed forth by WYSIWYG editors... doesn't work as advertised in many (mostly non-M$) browsers.
  

Of course, I have a lot of experience with FP, and I've learned all the little nasties... but there hasn't been anything I've wanted to do where Frontpage got in the way. I've evaluated other systems, and I'd like to thing I've been pretty fair (obviously, I choose not to upgrade our dept to FP 98).