Confusing and hard to follow but have a lot of information   May 14, 1999

I would rate this one worse that the "Laura" series.


Confusing and badly written   May 5, 1999
  1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I bought Using Frontpage 98 and Mastering Frontpage 98 and neither really said much. Using Frontpage 98 is a book written for beginners in NON-beginner language. Mastering Frontpage 98 is slightly better, but they are still both difficult to follow and where is information on Active Server Pages, JavaScript, VB Script, and any of the advanced features?! They aren't in either of these. However, if you are patient and want to know all the basics of Frontpage, then the books might be for you.


Inaccurate to the point of useless   December 3, 1998
  0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I agree with reader #1. Time and time again, I referred to the book only to find that it contained inaccurate information that simply did not work.

I asked the publisher if there was and updated version, for which there was not.


What a disappointment!   December 3, 1998
  3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I looked forward to getting this book home and delving into - as I bought it in the United Kingdom it cost almost $100.00! It was so huge I assumed that it would have all the information I required and more besides. Well it does and it doesn't. Firstly it hasn't a coloured image in it - bearing in mind the cost of the book and the graphical nature of the subject this seems to me to be a serious oversight.

Some of the black and white illustrations, most of which are screen grabs, are excellent but the tendendency for the authours to introduce their topic and then say - they will discuss the more advanced features later and then have to wade through to find just what they had in mind is most unrewarding, particularly as sometimes I really do believe he forgot to add them!. The section on frames leaves your head reeling and is far than a perfect explanation as the authours tend to fall back on "Microsoftese" - which as we all know "ain't that easy! Similarly the section on Image Composer could have done with some more practical examples. One of the reasons for buying Que Books is because they include a cd-rom at the back - well you tell me what good that does as it is just a collection of bits of software and links for the more erudite - some of which date back to 1986 - oh yes and of course a nice coloured plug for their other books Inn fac the only colour in over 900 pages of b&w.

Frankly despite the appalling costs of books in the UK I am going to have to fork out another 40 - yes you lucky people in the USA almost $100!- to find another book which fills in the gaps.

Perhaps I have asked too much of a single book but would advise the unwary unless they are already fairly familiar with FP would look elsewhere and have been recommended FrontPage Unleashed so hope that will solve my frustrations.

PS Anyone want a well thumbed copy of "Using Microsoft FrontPage"!


Beta version of FP = poor documentation   June 4, 1998
I have to say I was very disappointed in this book. The authors obviously used a Beta copy of both FP 98 and Image Composer. There are many places where there is simply incorrect information. For example, the description of using the Database Wizard to integrate your pages with a database...it was part of FP 97 and no longer exists. Another example, the early screen shots of Image Composer show version 1.0...version 1.5 ships with FP 98.

The majority of the book is filled with non-FP topics, such as ActiveX and VBSScript. Although those are important topics for Web designers, they seem to just be filler because there is so little information about FP itself.