FrontPage 2003: A Major Upgrade

In the software industry, there are different kinds of upgrades: There is the incremental upgrade, where only minor changes are made and major upgrades that result in major changes in form and functionality to the product. Previously, the only major upgrade for FrontPage was FrontPage 2000. FrontPage 2003 is only the second major upgrade to the popular Web design product.

While the release of FrontPage 2003 happens in parallel with the release of the entire Microsoft Office 2003 System, the differences between this version of the product and previous versions is considerably more significant than any of the other products introduced in this upgrade cycle.

To simply call FrontPage 2003 a major upgrade and to say that it is "better" than previous versions of the product is to understate the tremendous changes in form and functionality. Most of the complaints of existing users of FrontPage and other Web design products have been answered very well: Previous FrontPage users are responding to the 2003 release with "it's about time," and users of other products are simply saying "Wow!"

My History with FrontPage

I first created my Web site, FrontPageWorld.com on FrontPage 97 and have been updating it with new features as new versions of FrontPage were released. The goal of this site has always been to show users what FrontPage can do by showing them a site built and updated with FrontPage.

With this release I found that the old site couldn't reflect the power afforded to me by FrontPage 2003 and am completely redoing it based on what this new release finally makes possible. By the time this book is released, the new site will be in place. If you want to see where the site "came from," check out http://frontpageworldarchive.frontpagelink.com/.

You might want to consider what the new features provided by FrontPage 2003 mean to any existing Web sites you currently maintain.

In addition to the changes made to the product, FrontPage 2003 makes great strides in taking FrontPage toward to what Microsoft, and many others, consider to be the future of Web design.