RE: Web Development Software -- MIDRANGE-L

VBA is actually VBScript and performs server-side functions when run on the
Microsoft Web Server. The functions may include ADO support for DB2 support
or launch ActiveX objects. We at CMI use an ActiveX object to communicate
via Sockets to our AS/400. I have just released an article call 'Using IBM
AS/400 with the Microsoft Internet Information Server' and hope to have it
published in an April issue of a popular midrange magazine.

If you want to see this stuff in action check out http://www.cm-inc.com
If you need any help understanding why or where this stuff fits in, email me
directly at ken@cm-inc.com

Ken Slaugh  (707) 795-1512 x118
Chouinard & Myhre, Inc.
AS/400 Network Administrator / MSE
Client Access/400 Specialist
http://www.cm-inc.com/


-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Lundgren [mailto:lundgren@iris-software.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 9:56 AM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: RE: Web Development Software



> > 3. FP 2000 can be extended with VBA. Again, pretty slick.
>
>Extend with VBA? Don't you mean shot fulla security holes with VBA :)

VBA is used to extend the editing environment; hardly a security issue. VBA 
is currently an under-used but really powerful feature of FrontPage.

> > 4. I have found that I can quickly design a page in FrontPage, then
tweak
> > the HTML and/or import it into ColdFusion when it's ready. FP is a
> > phenomenal prototyping tool. As much as Microsoft gets a bad rep, there 
> are
> > a few tools the company does VERY well: FrontPage, Visual Basic, 
> Word/Excel
> > and Access.
>
>To each his own, I was just offering my experience. But the thing is that
>when you talk to ASP and Frontpage developers you quickly realize that
>they have to tweak the code. So does the trade off of WYSIWYG offer any
>advantage over knowing the language and finding a good editor?
>If you have to tweak the code anyway what good is WYSIWYG?

Unless you are outputting a simple page or query results, you're going to 
have to prototype the page. Playing around with font sizes, color schemes, 
white space, overall look and appeal, is VERY difficult and time-consuming 
using straight html and an ASCII editor. That's why web pages looked so 
horrible before FrontPage, HomeSite, etc.

I mean, thank goodness we aren't in the WordStar days where we HAVE to know 
where the formatting tags go in a word processing document. In Word, you 
type, highlight and bold. Who cares about the underlying codes? In html, 
it's still important, but *really* only important to those who are 
generating dynamic pages with ASP, ColdFusion, Net.Data or whatever, IMHO.

>If you don't mind, build a table with Frontpage open the code browser cut
>and paste the table in your reply I would like to see if M$ has improved
>its code generation any.

This is a four by four table generated in FP (I hope this comes through):

<table border="1" width="100%">
   <tr>
     <td width="50%">&nbsp;</td>
     <td width="50%">&nbsp;</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
     <td width="50%">&nbsp;</td>
     <td width="50%">&nbsp;</td>
   </tr>
</table>

Looks okay to me! I don't have a problem with having FP insert non-breaking 
spaces.

  ... Chuck

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