Three Areas of Focus: Designing, Coding, and Extending

The changes made to FrontPage 2003 focus on three specific areas: designing, coding, and extending. Each of these elements is vital to good Web design and finds considerable attention in this release.

Improvements for Designing

In the area of design, FrontPage 2003 has provided tools to make it easier for users to create the site they want. Developers now have tools that enable precise layout and easy integration with graphics and multimedia from other products. With FrontPage 2003, you have more control of the layout of your Web site, you have the ability to use the design and graphics tools you want to use, and you now have a suite of additional tools within the product that help make your site more accessible to the outside world.

Improvements for Coding

Whereas FrontPage 2003 has many new design and layout features, the product also takes a strong emphasis in creating the best code possible. Not only is the code developed by FrontPage 2003 cleaner than previous versions, but also the capability to optimize the HTML adds a new element to the process. Unlike previous releases, the HTML code created by FrontPage 2003 easily competes with that of any existing Web design product.

In addition, Microsoft has added a number of new features in dealing with code from within the FrontPage interface that will make most experienced coders incredibly happy. New built-in scripting and coding tools make it a much more powerful tool for coding Web sites.

Improvements for Extending FrontPage

An additional major focus in FrontPage 2003 is the ability to extend the product to work with XML data-driven Web sites and Windows SharePoint Services. Users are now able to produce powerful data-driven sites significantly faster than ever before with this new toolset and direction.