An HTML editor allows you to create a website from the scratch with the use of HTML. It also allows you to edit the web page as easily like the use of a word processor. These programs are also known as WYSIWYG editors.

Microsoft's FrontPage is the most popular web editor in the market. It is a part of the Microsoft Office package. It is an easy as well as a cheap solution as most people have Microsoft Office to work with Word and Excel.

Use of FrontPage
Working with FrontPage is quite easy, you can create either a single page or an entire website. Tool bar buttons can be used to alter things such as fonts, colors, conversion of the text to bold or italic, an creation of links and insertion of pictures.

Menus provide more complex functions, such as, creation of a table. The reason behind the popularity of FrontPage is its ability to insert scripts such as animations and hit counters into the page.

FrontPage Extensions
A number of hosts have 'FrontPage Extensions' installed in their systems. They allow easy uploading of site from FrontPage to the host. However, it is better to save files using FTP, as your system needs to be installed with Extensions beforehand to allow FrontPage Form to work, or in oder to add the search function to your site.

Hence, FrontPage should not be used to design any dynamic elements to your site as it requires Extension. It is suitable for designing static pages.

FrontPage Templates
FrontPage has an easy-to-use template system. You can use downloaded templates for creation of new pages. It will create a navigation system that depends upon the template. This is one easy and quick way to begin. However, always be careful and avoid things that might cause the layout to the template to break.

Problems with FrontPage
FrontPage produces 'Microsoft HTML' which is not a standard language. It cannot be edited by anyone who is not using FrontPage. Also, it is often displayed in an incorrect manner in browsers other than Internet Explorer. Even the FrontPage's default template is not a valid HTML.

Many of the codes are also repeated which make it much longer than required. Even the programs designed to clean up HTML codes do not work well with FrontPage's codes.

FrontPage produces very amateurish web pages. Also, it tends to add too much Javascript and makes it unmanageable. Also, the transitions between pages is very bad. All this makes web designing on FrontPage a big headache.