Bloated Front Page Code (2000)

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I’ve gotten complaints about unnecessary code in Front Page. I’ve found a site by Paul Colligan who is selling FrontPage Power Edit which is supposed to eliminate unneeded code in Front Page. Has anyone used this, does it work and do you recommend it? Thanks, Kate

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Hi Kate ~

Would you be so kind as to elaborate a bit about what unnecessary code is, and how it was so determined?

E.g., i use a lot of “unnecessary” code in my *.ASPs to trace execution. I can turn execution of the code on and off. It’s like a parachute: “unnecessary” most of the time.

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Hi:

Here is a sample of what “they” say is bloated:

We’re doing a quick example of FrontPage Power
Edit here.

We know you’ll like what it does.

Why does FrontPage produce so much HTML?

and here is their solution:

We’re doing a quick example of FrontPage Power Edit here.

We know you’ll like what it does.

Why does FrontPage produce so much HTML?

By the way, the reason I’m concerned is that I use FP to create a newsletter and the service is limiting KBs and point to the fact that FP adds extra code.

Thanks for your help!

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Well, there’s no single “right way” to do HTML. Yes, there are official standards, and yes there are de facto standards (i.e., what MSIE supports), and yes there are “good coding conventions.” I think if slimness of code is the top priority, this tool might be a good idea. But you can change your habits for writing pages, give the HTML pane a quick tune-up, and get pretty good results with FrontPage. (Certainly you don’t need those meta tags.)

So my code might look like this:

body, p, td {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10pt}

We’re doing a quick example of FrontPage Power Edit here.

We know you’ll like what it does.

Why does FrontPage produce so much HTML?

By defining your default body, paragraph tag, and table cell tag styles, you can get rid of all those annoying tags. Personally, I tend to copy from other pages rather than use FP’s styles dialog each time, but you can do it either way. Hope this helps.

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I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here, so if you want skip over this.

I’ve said it before; the reason FP gets such a bad rap about its’ code is not the product – but it is the way people use it. To be fair however, MS sells FP on the rational that you don’t have to know HTML to use it. So most people use FP like a word processor and wind up with the kind of code you’ve shown. However, FP can create reasonably lean code. To be honest I don’t sweat the metatag stuff, it’s the rest of the page that matters to me. You will find unusual code if you are using the workflow features in FP:

--[if gte mso 9] xml
mso:CustomDocumentProperties
mso:Categories msdt:dt="string" /mso:Categories
mso:Approval_x0020_Level msdt:dt="string" Approved /mso:Approval_x0020_Level 
mso:Assigned_x0020_To msdt:dt="string"></mso:Assigned_x0020_To
/mso:CustomDocumentProperties
/xml  ![endif]--

I’ve edited that a bit, by taking out the brackets. Much to my embarrassment, for the first little while I removed that code stubbornly through the HTML window and then was annoyed when FP kept “losing” the Approval category and other workflow settings I was trying to use. So, I really have to walk my own talk and that is understand the product I am working with and the language it is handling (HTML). With those two principles in mind, I think anyone can make educated decisions about how they want to use FP. Yeah, there are going to be some “excess tags” I’m going to live with – because they are going to help me keep track of large numbers of pages. But I’m also going to plan ahead with style sheets when ever possible, to keep my pages well structured and the code within them as lean as possible. I’m going to be fanatic about cleaning up documents converted from other MS apps, because they have all sorts of in them. I won’t worry about the metatags, since there are macros we’ve been discussing in this forum to strip those out of pages (and to add metatags in).
And that is really where I think FP shines in comparison to some of the other products in the marketplace. You do have the workflow tools and the VBA capabilities for an entry level price and with a relatively approachable interface. (That’s where I believe MS, should be making improvements). Competetive products are either more expensive or require you to buy additional products to support those features.
Okay
Did this answer your question, no probably not…

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