Yeah, I know.  Most web-heads will read this announcement from Microsoft, let out a snort, and say “It’s about time!’.

For me though, it’s not without just a bit of sadness and sense of loss that FrontPage goes quietly into the night.

You see, I was working as a software developer at a Microsoft Solution Provider when Microsoft first purchased the FrontPage product from Vermeer.  As part of our partnership we received beta copies of all the new MS software, including FrontPage. 

FrontPage was my introduction into the entire world of web development.  I mostly learned HTML by creating pages in it, then switching over to see the source code it had created.

And yes, I realize it created a lot of junk code, and was the basis for many nasty looking websites - but no more, in my opinion, than Geocities did 6-7 years ago or even MySpace is responsible for today. 

I still think the way FrontPage would build navigation bars from a flowchart view of a site is pretty nice - although it could have been nicer but MS hadn’t updated it for probably 7 of those nine years of production.

At any rate, I haven’t actively used FrontPage for years now, and the world of web authoring and content management has taken great leaps in terms of functionality and price.

But I wouldn’t be where - or who - I am today without Microsoft Frontpage, so I truly mean it when I say “Rest In Peace”.