I found FrontPage to be fairly easy to use. One of the major features is the ability to use word processing tools while making a web page. It is promoted as a WSYIWYG Web-Authoring tool, but I found that was not always what happened. FrontPage was easy to install, only took a few minutes to load on my computer, which is several years old. Once it was loaded I just started playing and first edited my e-portfolio with it. There are some neat features, and more that I would have liked to use, but since I am using a trial version, with no support or manual, I approached it using trial and error - which was somewhat successful.
One of the neat features is the ability to switch from normal view, to HTML view, to previewing it in the web browser. I experimented with some HTML writing, but couldn't get the animation I was trying to insert to run properly - my computer froze, so I deleted it. I could not find any help to get do manual HTML editing. I use Internet Explorer and was successful when previewing my documents, but when I viewed it using Netscape, I had problems. Animations did not always work and the font looked different. I used FrontPage to make the web page for Activity 1 and have several people contact me and tell me, the graphics don't work when viewing with Netscape. I checked the Microsoft website, but still couldn't get the bugs worked out. I also had trouble using an imported background. After playing around, I finally got one to work.
Another feature that I like are the tabs that allow you to switch from one page to another. Much like the feature found in Excel which allows you to go from spreadsheet to spreadsheet or chart. This makes it easy to have multiple pages open and work between them.
Playing around with the menu bars I discovered that I could add web components to my page. One that I added was a search component. Other available tools are counters, MSNBC, MSN, Expedia, link bars, spreadsheets and charts. The drawback is that many are Microsoft components, and that bothers a lot of people. I think that by playing around these too could be customized.
Another feature that is on the bottom right of every page is an area that tells how long it will take the page to download on a 28.8 modem. You'll know that pages with a lot of graphics are going to take a long time on a slow dial up modem.
There are templates and wizards available for use. I used a template for the first page of this exercise, but modified it to fit my needs. This was the first time I used a digital camera to directly load a picture onto a web page, the process was very simple - getting the dog to pose was much more difficult.
I had a lot of fun making a page with pictures from my son's recent high school graduation. I didn't spend any time editing the pictures, but the page with the thumbnails is neat to look at.
I think that FrontPage would be easy to use when teaching students how to make web pages. Not only would it be easy for students to use and produce some great pages, but teachers would find it easy to guide students through. I'm sure that the students would get adept at it very quickly.
Another feature that could be useful to businesses and to schools is one that allows the tracking of use by getting FrontPages weekly, and monthly reports, which track hits, domains and URLs, and search strings. You can also provide web content through top 10 lists that can be inserted into your pages.
I found the price of FrontPage to be anywhere from $129 to $179. I'm sure it will get cheaper, I don't know if I would pay that much, it would be worth it for ease of use if I were hosting a web page that required frequent updating. It is also very easy to use because it uses many of the same keyboard shortcuts used when word processing with Word.