Just when you thought FrontPage Server Extensions were no more..

With the release of Expression Web and announcement that FrontPage was no longer being developed alot of FrontPage developers.. well were up in arms. Many have already adopted Expression Web, others moved to other tools (Dreamweaver) and then the die hards simply decided they would use FrontPage until FrontPage no longer worked.

Enterprising Expression Web adopters have learned how to enable all the FrontPage web bots in Expression Web so they can continue to use them but with the looming release of IIS7 the question has been “are FrontPage Server Extensions going to be supported?”.   Well Robert McMurray has answered the looming question on his blog.  It looks like they are looking into an updated version of FPSE that could be supported on IIS7.

Personally, FPSE has been both a blessing and a curse for webhosts.  Many clients tend to go in and just annihilate all of the security settings in FrontPage and then wonder why their site gets defaced. Or they post default guestbooks and comment forms and wonder why they’re getting spammed so heavily from them. I think for backwards compatibility this is a good idea and it’s certainly welcomed.  However, I would really love to see an FPSE adapter created instead of just reviving FPSE from the dead. Perhaps a new IIS component that could make FPSE webbots work but at the same time provide an alternative (and more secure) functionality without having to re-enable FPSE. Like an adapter, connector, etc.. So former FrontPage users could still have the same webbot functionality but it would use updated technology (ASP.NET forms, master pages and CSS, etc).