More than a decade ago, when I was working as a Microsoft Certified Trainer at a local training company in Raleigh, I was sent to learn a new Microsoft product called "FrontPage 1.0". Microsoft had recently acquired a company, Vermeer Technologies, whose only product was the website development tool. I was literally in the first class Microsoft taught to the public on the course, and it was one of the reasons I ended up a Microsoft. I flew out to Redmond to attend the course and then spent time on the Microsoft campus. Less than a year later, I was hired by Microsoft in Atlanta to be a Systems Engineer supporting NT and Exchange. Boy, how time flies...
So I've followed Microsoft Front Page over the years, as it "grew up" in the web development space, evolving from Version 1.1 to FrontPage 97, then 98, 2000, 2002 and the current version 2003. If you've had a chance to pull down Beta 2 of Office 2007, you know that FrontPage as a product is not in the bits, so I thought some of you might be wondering where it is.
Jerome Thiebaud, a Senior Product Manager in the Office division, spent some time with me recently discussing the future of Microsoft FrontPage. Although FrontPage as a product is being retired, it is being replaced with two different products; Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Expression Web Designer.
SharePoint Designer 2007 In this prodcast, Jerome talks about when you would use which tool and the intended audience for each of the two new products. He spends most of his time discussing the new SharePoint Designer tool...highlighting new customization options, support for master pages, graphical workflow tools and the ability to deploy "no-code" applications using SharePoint Designer's new data view web parts.
If you need to customize a SharePoint site or are just a long time FrontPage user like me, listen to this prodcast to hear about where Microsoft is heading with it's web development platform.
Click the links below to play audio (23:11)
WMA Audio
For more information on Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, please visit the Microsoft website.