[BlueOnyx:02263] Re: General BlueOnyx remarks

[Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet]

Gerald Waugh wrote:

> Moving this to the General List, don't want the developers troubled reading 
> this stuff
> I recently had a customer purchase several servers, and didn't realize that
> there are no 'front page extensions' now he wants to reinstall with 
> BlueQuartz.
> 
> Is there any way that we could put the front page extensions on a server?

I don't think that FrontPage extensions are ever coming back.   There 
are several reasons for this, including:
1) The extension sources are no longer available.
2) If you *could* find old sources running around, they won't work with 
modern Apache versions.
3) If they *did* work (and they don't) with modern Apache, that would be 
illegal as per Microsoft's licensing

So, FrontPage is gone.  Not just for BlueOnyx.  Anybody installing a new 
server on any current platform will have the same issue.  But that 
doesn't mean it's the end of the world.  Have you explained to your 
customer that users can still use FrontPage, but just need to upload in 
FTP mode?

Or of course if he has several servers, he could keep a BQ box and 
relegate his FP users there.  But even that is not a good option, since 
as updates roll on, there will be things that continually break 
FrontPage.  Or FrontPage will just seem to break on its own.  So my 
suggestion would be to give up the support nightmare that is FrontPage 
and inform the users on how they can use FrontPage with the FTP 
publishing option (it's built-in, so no need for separate software).

Or to really do the users a service, recommend they try an alternate 
design software.   We've successfully recommended CoffeeCup HTML Editor 
to many of our users, who really seem to like it.   And at $50 (with a 
try before you buy) it's just not a huge investment.   They also have 
something called Visual Site Designer that I have no history with, but 
looks interesting for customers who are very tech-savvy.

-- 
Chris Gebhardt
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