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I'll start with one which doesn't appear to be covered in the documentation, or the many books which are now available:
To open and edit pages on a remote server using ftp.
Click edit/open site and in the site name box enter 'ftp://your ip address', you'll then be prompted for name and password. The folder list will now show your site, and you can open, edit and save pages as though they were on your local machine.
Learning how someone created a cool page
You can load any page on the internet into EW. Click file/open file and in the file name box enter 'http://the page you want to open' The page will now load into EW, you can then edit the page and it's CSS.
You can also use the site import wizard to load whole websites! But be careful with other peoples content and copyright!
To open and edit pages on a remote server using ftp.
There has been many threads recommending strongly against using FTP as you mentioned for security reasons.
To open and edit pages on a remote server using ftp.
Click edit/open site and in the site name box enter 'ftp://your ip address', you'll then be prompted for name and password. The folder list will now show your site, and you can open, edit and save pages as though they were on your local machine.
steve, I might strongly suggest that you close all FTP Ports. These days, FTP is a major risk that you should nip in the bud beforehand.
To do the above without using FTP, just enable FP Extensions (which are secure) and add the "Edit" button to your IE Toolbar. Browse to the site, click the Edit button, enter your login credentials and viola, you're in and editing live at the server.
Now, you could take this one step further and make sure that you have all the appropriate programs assigned to their respective file extensions. So, if I browse to the /images/ folder and want to edit an image, I'll double click it, my Fireworks opens, I edit the image, hit Save and viola, it is live. There are all sorts of neat things you can do live at the server from within IE.
FTP is a no-no these days. If you have an FTP Port open, the first thing you'll be faced with are the obligatory "Dictionary Attacks" on login areas, they can be nasty.
Learning how someone created a cool page
You can load any page on the internet into EW. Click file/open file and in the file name box enter 'http://the page you want to open' The page will now load into EW, you can then edit the page and it's CSS.
Using the same feature as above, just browse to the page in IE, click your Edit button and viola, you're good to go. You'll need to configure your Edit button to use EWD as the default editor so when you click it, that is what is being invoked. You can have all sorts of editors in the list with one of them being the default. I've got all the Office Programs in my list along with EWD and FrontPage.
just enable FP Extensions
I thought that they were moving away from the FP Extensions in EW.
They are. We just haven't investigated what replaces this particular functionality and it appears that the FP Extensions still work as expected with EWD in this instance of "Editing at the Browser/Server Level". The FP Extensions utilize WebDAV which makes it perfect for editing.
Microsoft have announced future versions of EW will support SFTP.
Microsoft aren't developing FP extensions anymore, although they are available for IIS7. Instead they are offering WebDAV for IIS7.
I'm running Linux/Apache so I've just googled WebDAV for Linux, it looks interesting. I might have a go installing it on my local server. Unfortunately my hosting company don't offer it :-(
just browse to the page in IE, click your Edit button and viola, you're good to go. You'll need to configure your Edit button to use EWD as the default editor so when you click it
I've just set it up, very slick!
[edited by: steve at 11:04 am (utc) on April 24, 2008]
I've just set it up, very slick!
Its definitely one of those WYSIWYG WOW moments, eh? :)
Makes you think about the CMS possibilities, huh?
Im planing to get EW, but can you make wordpress themes using EW..?
I don't know, EW uses DWT - Dynamic Web Templates.
You can download a free trial of EW2 from Microsoft, so it won't cost you anything to find out!
When you save your edited image file, don't do a save as unless you are saving another copy. And then, you should right click it and drag it to create a copy and rename it. Then open that image for editing. Or, you could use the save as feature in your image editor, it gets a bit tricky because you have to browse the network to find the site your working on. I prefer to just overwrite the existing file. I create backups beforehand by doing a Publish to my local system. I publish down. Most people publish up.
NOTE: When you login using the "Edit/WebDAV" method, you may not see the folder the page you are editing is inside of. Be sure to click inside the "Folder Pane", and then go up and refresh the web (F5) and it will appear. Its been a long standing bug and if you are not aware of it, you're going to be wondering where the heck the directory is for the page you are editing.
Once you've got the Edit/WebDAV setup, you can now use most if not all of Windows Drag and Drop functionality. For example, I'll have multiple windows open and will be copying, backing up, etc between those windows. All through the WebDAV interface. So, instead of FTP'ing, I just go to the site, click Edit and drag my files over from the local system.
I get excited when talking about this particular functionality of FP and EWD. I've been using the WebDAV features and didn't really know it from day one. That was when the product was from Vermeer Technologies, right before MS bought them. If you read about the History of FrontPage, you'll see that FP was quite ahead of its time and many just didn't want to accept that fact. I did. And it was an excellent choice.
If your system is powerful enough, you could easily have 10, 15, 20 webs open performing different tasks. Its really an excellent editing environment and now I know why I never really got involved with FTP.
I've managed to set it up to connect XP Pro SP2 to a Linux Apache box. However, it took quite some time to get it going!
XP would happily connect via my network places, but it won't map to a drive letter, because of known authentication issues between it and Apache. I assume you are using IIS?
There are many different 'work arounds' - usernames with @ symbols, adding a trailing # symbol, adding :80 to the URL - none of which worked for me.
The web rumour mills say the problems which were created in SP2 are going to be fixed in SP3, we'll see.
In the end I stumbled across Novell Netdrive which is abandonware (I haven't heard of that before!) It gets round the authentication issue and makes the web folders appear local in 'my computer'.
Now I'm up and running, I've assigned each website on Apache a drive letter in XP, and I can drag, drop, copy, create and delete files as though they were on my local machine.
Clicking on a file or image launches the corresponding editor program.
As you mentioned the folder pane doesn't work in EW with the IE edit method, clicking it and refreshing with F5 doesn't help either. It will only work for me if I open the site in EW before clicking to edit in IE.
All in all its pretty impressive, my next step is to set up a Dynamic Web Template and move towards the CMS you alluded to.
XP would happily connect via my network places, but it won't map to a drive letter, because of known authentication issues between it and Apache. I assume you are using IIS?
IIS of course. You are a brave man running EWD on Apache. I'm sure there are some around here that might call that blasphemy. :)
All in all its pretty impressive, my next step is to set up a Dynamic Web Template and move towards the CMS you alluded to.
Ah, let's talk about DWT's or Dynamic Web Templates. This is a FrontPage feature and I've not looked to see how they are handled in EWD. I experimented with DWTs way back when and was impressed although there were a few bugs I wasn't comfortable with and my method of using include files was/is working without fail.
Those DWTs are a powerhouse! You can give a user "finite" editing capabilities. Don't want them to change the surrounding element?
<h1><!-- #BeginEditable "h1" -->Example<!-- #EndEditable --></h1>Are the users more advanced and are capable of determining the right element? Want to give them more control over editing elements?
<!-- #BeginEditable "h1" --><h1>Example</h1><!-- #EndEditable -->When I say "finite", I do mean finite...
<h1>E<!-- #BeginEditable "x" -->x<!-- #EndEditable -->ample</h1>The above would only allow them to edit the "x" in example. A bit extreme but I wanted to show the "finite" editing capabilities.
I never really did get into using them. Right now I'm converting to .net based templates and am enjoying the learning experience. Its a bit of a change from my normal WYSIWYG setup but it is a bit more streamlined than my current methods which are getting old. :)
When you open a page that has a DWT attached to it. You'll quickly see those areas that are editable. Also, everything is now "locked" on the page while in editing mode. So, a user couldn't accidently move or resize something if the editable region didn't allow it. It's a pretty solid editing environment. And, if you are using document check-in and check-out, allowing multiple authors 24/7/365 access works well. One author checks a document out and the other team members cannot edit that file until the user returns it back into the document pool.
EWD is the replacement for FP. :)
VTI = Vermeer Technologies Inc
I like to see you Web sites.
I bet your sites look pretty simple. If not, then you're using a high end editor and you're BSing about coding by hand.
How can you keep track of multiple page changes? How can you keep track of multiple internal and external link changes? How can you keep your SPELLING correctly in multiple documents?
There's no way I could have done my research by hand... I mean, without something like FP or EW.
If you're relying 99% on dynamic content, I'll like to see the performance of your sites on the search engines SPECIALLY if your competitors use static content.
On the other hand, if you're just designing Web page templates, that's another story...
It'll be nice to know exactly what is what you do by hand.
But last week I found soemthing even better...
EW2 beta!
Its much faster and more stable, and has php support, and just looks snazzier.
