One of the most interesting bits of news I’ve heard in a while was that Microsoft is to discontinue FrontPage. The details can be found here. I never felt comfortable with this particular piece of software, rather that it is overblown, long winded, is difficult to use and produces poor results. In some ways I found that this announcement has left me with feelings of disappointment.

FrontPage is probably where a lot of people begin with creating a web page. I do a small amount of teaching in web design and at the schools and colleges this is often the only software application available to students, apart from notepad, but because it is an MS product the students seem to take readily to it, only later when trying to use hyperlinks do they find out it delivers more problems than it solves.

However, it will be replaced with something called Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition which apparently is a free download, free for a year that is. Ever the optimist I’m sure this will answer all the complaints I had about it’s forerunner and will be much easier to use and teach!