MS Office 2003 or 2007

I am biting the bullet and hoping to get accepted on a course for website design and am wondering if any of you, or maybe your kids have outgrown the programme I'll be required to use and would like to sell it to me. I will require MS Office version 2003 or 2007 which needs to include - Expression Web, Outlook and Word

Hi
If you are doing website design, then it is frontpage 2003 rather than word that you will need if you are using microsoft tools. You can write webpages in word, but it is not the ideal tool at all (I leave out the techie geek details).
The latest version of frontpage is still 2003 , there is no 2007 version. It does not come packaged in all versions of office.

Expression web isn't part of the office suite (I haven't heard of it either)

Why do you want outlook? It is usually only used by businesses running exchange server as a lot of the functionality is not available to the stand alone user (shaing calendars, task lists, integration to sharepoint etc). If it is purely for mail that you want, the the free outlook express will be adequate for you.

I do have a copy of office 2003 hanging around somewhere.

Can I suggest that you also aquire a ftp program if you are planning on publishing your website, it makes managing uploading to your website a lot easier. There are some free ones around

Feel free to ask questions I am a Microsoft Office Solution Developer at the moment

Let me be the first to say that no Microsoft software is required for web design. In fact, FrontPage is anathema to good website design, and Expression Web is unlikely to be much better.

Oh, and Dreamweaver is a waste of money too.

Seriously, if the course is going to tell you to just "run this program and press this button" then you might as well not bother- it's just a course on how to run Microsoft's software. I'd recommend getting a book on website design from the library, or buying one, or following an online tutorial. It's trivially easy to buy a domain and some server space and have a go. OpenOffice (free!) has some web design features. Please read this article for a taste of what it can do. And as for learning web design techniques, take a look at www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ to see what *not* to do and then just do the right thing.

If you really want to do the course and you *have* to buy the software then you might find you qualify for an educational discount (see, I'm not all bad). Expression Web v1.0 was released in 2006, so is unlikely to be present in Office 2003 (and perhaps not in Office 2007 either).

A

Frontpage 2003 is crap (and I believe is no longer supported by Microsoft) - the HTML code it produces is not fully compliant and while it might run OK on IE6/IE7 will cause problems with Firefox or Opera browsers.

frontpage is also a piece of s**t that produces bloated HTML coding. learning basic HTML to put up a simple webpage is dead easy. and in fact at Uni of Waikato level 200 computing for business courses we used Notepad to write HTML, just save the text as xxx.html instead of xxx.txt

once you're confident with HTML and have finished everything there is in the "HTML for dummies" book, go grab "JAVA for dummies" much better than a course on how to point and click in a software app, because you then UNDERSTAND the web coding and can track down errors manually.

Thanks for your respones guys - much appreciated
I haven't yet read the links you posted ame, but thanks for doing so - I'll read them right after posting

As I know so little about how websites in general and my aim is to eventually have one on which my photos can be purchased, I feel I need to be lead by the nose through the whole operation[] There is no cost for the course (Polytech) and I can do it at home.

I see there is a version 2 Expression Web programme on the market - I guess it's sold separate. Corr, I had no idea till looking at some websites that Office is sold with so many variations, like you say Moggy!

Thanks for your invite to ask questions Moggy I have no idea why I'd need Outlook [] I'd never heard of the programme till recently - is it so much different to OExpress, which I already run? This is the list of requirments taken from the Polytechs website.

Ok, well, Midge and I posted almost at the same time.

So take all I said with a grain of salt!

Way to go, Midge! It can be really difficult deciding you're going to do something ... and then finding the time and where-with-all to actually do it. I am very impressed. Just quietly, I'd love to start my Masters but I don't have time to sit on the toilet some days, so I guess it will wait.

When does your course start? Is it through Otago Polytech?

Go you!!!

Take care,

Prim, I can't see your earlier post:confused: Thanks for the encouragement I'm winding down the farming activities and don't have the money to do much tripping about taking pix, so it's a good opportunity to make good use of my time. Also being a night owl helps[]

All Invercargill, Gore and Chch Polytechs run the course. They've been a bit slack at getting back to me but guess they are flat stick at this time.

Midge, I edited what I had said

So, um, I was thinking ... it's school holidays and I'd love to see some cows.

Would you mind a visitor at some part of it, with kids in tow?

It's ok to say no

I'm off to bed, so will PM you tomorrow (thinking about next week, or the one after, just sometime before Feb 02nd).

I'd love a visit from you Prim We're quite kid friendly here - the Grandies love getting out and about amongst the cows and goats with me.

One of our lads and his girl arrive from Aus on Sat and they'll be here off and on over 3 weeks but we can sure work around them. It's just the first few days of their arrival that will be real busy catching up

In defence of Microsoft frontpage. I use it for my personal website, because it is easy and quick. When writing web applications as have in the past used Interdev, now mainly the .NET studio. Frontpage is good for beginners as it is quick and easy to produce web pages, which when you are beginning anything is essential to see something happen quickly as you can soon get disheartened.
Once you know more about html and about how browsers interpret html pages, then you can start tweaking your pages to make them more compliant and faster to load. But until then, producing web pages easily that can be read by the majority of users of the internet is not a bad thing. You can use notepad, but why make things difficult for yourself.

Outlook Express, reads and sends email and reads newsgroups, it also can store contact information. Outlook is a different beast. I can do all the above, but is designed for a collaborative working environent eg allowing others access to certain mail folders (eg everyone in the help desk group can access all emails sent to the help desk) , you can make appointments in other peoples diaries (if allowed to), you can alsso integrate it to for example a gant chart on sharepoint which displays peoples tasks, how long they will take to complete etc. Usually if you only need email, then stick to outlook express as outlook takes more resources.

i dont know if this is any use to you hubby had it sent to him and was told it was good .well i will attach the link anyway for anyone wanting to give it a go

[url="http://mhtml:{47534F31-831A-42A4-9D78-711661EF5140}mid://00000680/!x-usc:http://openoffice-software.com/new/home/?affebnid=124&gid=&ovid=&yid=&msid=&hop=howgood"] openoffice-software.com/new/home/?affebn...d=&msid=&hop=howgood [/url]

"You can use FrontPage, but why make things difficult for yourself?"

Anyway, getting back to the original question, it seems that the course requirements are fairly generic:
PC with Internet connection, Microsoft Office version 2003 or 2007 (including Outlook, Word, Expression Web), Adobe Reader, Winzip, printer and paper.
I'd suggest that you could sign up for the course and just acquire whatever you need when you need it. Office itself has nothing at all to do with web development, but it could be a requirement for submitting course work (but OpenOffice will read and save Word format). Similarly Adobe Reader could be required for reading course material (Foxit is better). For Outlook just "an email program" would do. Winzip is a bit tricky- it's not free. There are some free unzipping utilities out there though. Finally, Expression Web is a bit gnarly- it's not part of Office 2003, and probably not Office 2007. I assert that it's not even a requirement for web design.

Uncoincidentally, if you're serious about web design you should be using Unix. All the tools are there, they are all top-quality and free, including Apache, a World-class web server.

A

Midge,

Good on you for wanting to learn something new. I agree with the others that writing web pages is not so difficult, but if you have no idea then taking a course is a good place to start.

I would suggest that you contact the polytech and ask them what you need the MS Office things for.

If you need Word for writing essays etc. then you can use open office instead (which is free). You can save the documents in a word format so the polytech people will still be able to open them.

If you only need Outlook for email then maybe Outlook express (which you already have) will be good enough.

It is possible that they tell you that you need these particular programs as they don't know of any alternatives.

If that is the case then you will probably only need to buy Expression Web. You can ask at the polytech if they know of a place you can buy it with an educational discount.

George

Apologies, expression web is from Microsoft, I hadn't heard of it till now, looks like it is the successor to Frontpage