Frontpage 2003 - Good option for Japanese?

Follow up to Japanese language editors

[whats up skip]

A while back we discussed various web editors for Japanese web pages.

For the last day I have been using Frontpage 2003 Beta (English) to work on our Japanese language site. It is a very different program in its feel and functions to previous versions. It actually feels like a cross between Frontpage XP and Dreamweaver 4.

It regonises the Dreamweaver templates automatically, although I am yet to work with the templates in detail. As with Frontpage XP on Win XP Pro there is no problem that we have come across yet with the Japanese in the English version.

Of course there is always the issue of cost, but that will depend on your other needs or preferences.

[bill]

skip, now that you've had a few days to play with this what are your conclusions? Are there any differences with the Japanese IME in Office 2003? As long as you can switch smoothly between CJK and English in Office and non-Office packages I find that to be one of the biggest advantages of the new Office packages on Windows machines.

You mentioned that this version of FP is very different from its predecessors. Could you expand on that?

[whats up skip]

We have found a couple of things negative about Frontpage 2003 now.

It seems to need a very powerful PC (could be just a Beta issue), but it ran really slowly on a Celeron 450MHz with 256MB of RAM and Win XP PRO. Frontpage XP has been running fine on this. Had to revert this system back to older version. Works fine on Celeron 1.7GHZ with 256MB of RAM.

Recognises Dreamweaver templates, but does not seem to like to update many of the pages using them (bugger!).

Cannot use Dreamweaver plug ins - might sound obvious, but still important.

Still don't know about the IME. It is completely new, but we had to revert the machine/user back before we had a good chance to look at it.