Microsoft Frontpage Finally Dies

Microsoft has announced that with the release of Office 2007, the web editor Frontpage will finally die. While I have nothing against WYSIWYG's in general, Frontpage has always bothered me. It seemed this mediocre piece of software was used exclusively by those who were born without any design sense at all.

While the openness and accessibility of the web is one of it's greatest features, I'm glad that participation is moving towards the use of blogs and social sites like Flickr and Friendster. Sites like these are helping to put an end to the background-tiled, animated-GIF, blink-tag, MIDI-enhanced sites of yore. This is something for which we can all be grateful.

Everyone can participate on the web, and they should. But that doesn't mean anyone can build a website. I'm sure every web professional who reads this has come across that client who thinks making sites is so easy, 'my nephew could do it.'

On a sidenote, I do see that Office 2007 will incorporate Groove. That's pretty exciting. Many years ago I was at the press conference where Lotus father Ray Ozzie announced Groove, which is an online collaboration platform. It was pretty jerky in it's early days, but showed a lot of promise. And word is that the new Groove will finally deliver what was promised. I can't wait to check it out.