Microsoft Frontpage - decision, confusion or clarity?

After the last article on Adobe's Dreamweaver's page, I decided to look at similar pages. In the software world there are many similar products and product that are sold to similar market base. The one advantage software marketing has is the ease of gathering competitive and useful information. The obvious page authoring and design competitors are: Microsoft Frontpage, Nvu (open source), Netscape Composer. From there the list goes down to really small programs. But in this line up, there is an interesting twist. Microsoft FrontPage is not really a contender. First of all, the program is being discontinued. But not really, it is actually being "split" into two programs: Share Point Designer and Expression Web. But here lies the twist, the main FrontPage page has this "decide what you need" graphics. This is something rarely seen on the web. Although it does explain that this product is actually becoming two. For the professional web designer not using Share Point, this is probably a confusing explanation.

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Microsoft FrontPage splitting into two
So let's get back to our original point. Clarity, Focus and Relevance is a little fuzzy at this point. Clarity I tried to define as message divided into smaller sections, using standard terms, relevant to each other, focus on a single idea, amplify in later sections. But here, there is a full article, in small sections on how the FrontPage product is divided. Overall, this is an OK way to show what happened to a tool that 'migrates'. But you have to think and explore. Theoretically, the message is clear. But it could have been more clear if there were more explanations on each product, or differentiation between the two. For an old page designer, it seemed to me that "Expression" was the "orphaned" product. Sometimes things seem a little like they really are. For some reason, just like what happened with Photoshop about 10 years ago, Adobe has focused very strongly on the professional designer. I think here they won over Microsoft. If you want to know why, take a look at the description of each product. If you need more info, both products are downloadable for a trial period. Maybe here we can also do a comparison. But for me, the message from Adobe is a little more convincing.

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There is another point here that needs expanding. For fairness sake, the Microsoft FrontPage page is a little dated. It has been there probably since mid 2006. This was a little early for AJAX with the tabs, collapsible 'accordion' ads and sections and other nice GUI tricks. (These make a page look like a PC program, and this is the message behind the new updates to these new tools). But clarity is not a matter of layout or graphics. In the FrontPage article there is a "Find more information on the new Microsoft Web authoring tools" section with links to the new products, that should have been at the top somewhere. Maybe even accessible from the graphics. The section on "Which tool is for you?" should have more on features. It looks to me like the Share Point Designer, or actually the Share Point product manager won out over the Expression product manager. Or more likely, neither one thought enough about the implication of a little more information for each product.
--- Well, it's time to move on. Live, observe and learn. I would like to look at the other pages, Nvu and Netscape Composer. These are simpler 'free' tools, but still draw a crowd and useful in designing pages which are more hand coded than WYSIWYG designed. Looking at them has another purpose: what do you do with something free that does not have a marketing budget? Do you just put it "out there" - 'if we build it they will come' style? That has been the "open source" marketing argument for a long time. Let's see if it works? Where is it done well? What can be learned? and finally, how we do it when we need it (don't laugh, even companies with cash in the bank don't run to advertise too quickly.)