What do you use?

[Steve Rindsberg]

Originally Posted by Andrew B.

Microsoft desktop applications have always been about routine home and office. They have never been about "best of breed." They seemed to know how to make something good enough to sell a lot, without being the most powerful.

That's particularly true of the "afterthought" apps, the ones outside the core trilogy (Word/Excel/PowerPoint) and to some degree, Access. Sometimes they buy outside existing software that fills a niche that the other Office apps don't quite fit .. Visio, for example. Or develop a, let's be real, feature-limited, crude version in-house, toss it out there and see if it sinks or swims for a couple of versions. If it doesn't develop a following, they toss it off the ship.

It seems that Publisher meets enough needs for enough users to keep it on board. I was surprised to learn that it was first released in 1991, by the way. As a standalone.

Their web site program and its successor, I think, have been held under until the bubbles stopped. I can't remember the names of either of them, but they're both dead.

MS hasn't given up on that one, though. Visual Studio, their high-end programming system, can create web pages, and they also released https://www.techradar.com/news/micro...ebsite-builder a bit over two years ago. I get the feeling that the thing never had a chance to take its first breath, much less was able to make bubbles. I just stumbled across it, but hadn't even heard of it before.

This is why I might look at MS LatestGreatestApp, but will never, ever use it for anything serious until it's made it to version 3. I wasn't raised an orphan and don't want my software to be either. ;-)

[woody649]

Publisher wouldn't have to be anywhere near "best of breed" to handle simple fiction books, or even simply non-fiction books. If I can do a better than good enough job of formatting books, it wouldn't be rocket science to make that possible in Publisher.

[woody649]

Originally Posted by Steve Rindsberg

Their web site program and its successor, I think, have been held under until the bubbles stopped. I can't remember the names of either of them, but they're both dead.

MS hasn't given up on that one, though. Visual Studio, their high-end programming system, can create web pages, and they also released https://www.techradar.com/news/micro...ebsite-builder a bit over two years ago. I get the feeling that the thing never had a chance to take its first breath, much less was able to make bubbles. I just stumbled across it, but hadn't even heard of it before.

Is the Microsoft wen site builder available, anywhere? I hadn't heard of it, either. I know nothing about HTML coding. I need a web site, and I have lost count of home many "easy" web site builders I have tried -- and failed. Not the fault of the software (probably), but more just a case of the software not being laid out in a way that makes any sense to my analog, pre-computer brain.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Ah, something triggered Total Recall: It was called Microsoft FrontPage. There's an interesting article with suggestions for alternatives here:

https://digital.com/best-web-hosting.../alternatives/

That reminded me that to get full use of FrontPage, you needed to have FrontPage Extensions installed at the web host end. I doubt that many hosts would be willing to do that any longer, since FP is long dead.

A lot depends on you as to which tool is best. Do you want to do WYSIWYG editing or HTML coding, or something in between?

I tried FrontPage and found it quite frustrating, could never really get a handle on it. Mostly because it wanted to HELP so much, DO so much FOR me ... but that I didn't trust it to DO. I was used to creating pages/sites in raw HTML or later, using software I wrote myself, a program that a few hardcore devotee geeks love but that I would never visit upon the innocent.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Here's the web site builder referred to in the TechRadar article. From a quick scan, it seems to be more about marketing than web site building. Personally, as I think I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't touch Microsoft's LatestGreatestMostestWunnerfullest until it's been out and widely accepted for a couple of years. But that's just me.

https://ui.ads.microsoft.com/campaign/digitalmarketing

[later]
On reading through the adverfluff on the site, it seems to be more about managing social media and less, or nothing, about creating a site. For example:

Do I need a website to use Digital Marketing Center?
That depends on what you want to do – if you’re planning to use Digital Marketing Center to manage your social media profiles, you don’t need a website. If you want to use Digital Marketing Center for your paid advertising campaigns, then yes, you’ll need a website.

[woody649]

I may still have FrontPage 2003 (the last version) installed on this computer, or my spare computer. I have the installation files if I might ever want or need to install it.


I was never able to figure it out. A friend who is much more knowledgeable about HTML than I advised me not to use it. He hated it because it inserts a lot of extraneous code. And I don't think the web pages it creates are responsive (auto re-sizing), so FrontPage wouldn't be a viable choice for creating a web site today, anyway.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Take that last paragraph. Put a checkmark next to each sentence for me. Thanks.