How to Convert Microsoft Frontpage 5.0 to Dreamweaver 8

A transition from FrontPage to Dreamweaver shouldn't leave your website lost at sea.

Microsoft FrontPage 5.0 and Adobe Dreamweaver 8 are both powerful, popular tools for designing web pages. But what happens when a project is handed off from a FrontPage user to a Dreamweaver guru? Or vice versa? The standardization of web-based documents makes it easy to maintain website continuity when switching between the two systems, with minimal stress and downtime.

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Dreamweaver 8
• A web browser

Instructions

1. Launch Adobe Dreamweaver 8.

2. On the Dreamweaver 8 menu bar, choose "File" and then "Open."

3. By default, the explorer window will show all compatible file types. Navigate to the location of your saved FrontPage project.

4. In your FrontPage project folder, double-click on the HTML file that corresponds to the page you want to edit in Dreamweaver.

5. The HTML webpage that was originally authored in FrontPage 5.0 will come up in Dreamweaver 8 ready to be edited, saved and re-published as needed.

Tips & Warnings

• Note that you don't even need to have Microsoft FrontPage to import an existing FrontPage project into Dreamweaver. So if you're switching to Dreamweaver because of licensing issues or FrontPage errors, because FrontPage projects are "published" (saved) in standard HTML, Dreamweaver can parse them without any special exporting from within FrontPage.

• Although this article details the conversion of HTML projects between FrontPage 5.0 and Dreamwaver 8, the same basic principles for saving, opening and editing HTML files apply across all modern version of FrontPage and Dreamweaver. The current versions (as of early 2010) of these software packages have similar support for CSS, DHTML, XHTML and other web-friendly file formats.

References

• The BoxedArt Guide to (Dreamweaver) Website Templates
• FrontPage Tutorial: Publishing Your Website

Resources

• Dreamweaver 8 Essentials Tutorial