Proudfoot Communications has served the Caribbean island communities of Trinidad and Tobago with Web and multimedia services for more than six years. Owner Andrew Proudfoot's team has designed more than 300 Web sites and actively hosts more than 80 sites — running the gamut from a carnival costume business to the Trinidad and Tobago Airline Pilots Association. The company home page, Proudfoot.net, and its client Web sites were all built by using FrontPage.

"We have been using FrontPage solely as our Web editing and publishing tool since FrontPage 98," says Proudfoot. "We also use only Web hosting companies that have the FrontPage Server Extensions from Microsoft."

Web site requirements

The Proudfoot Communications Web site needed to market the company's Web design abilities in addition to print and multimedia services such as promotional CDs and corporate intranet projects. The Proudfoot online portfolio highlights an impressive range of samples of the team's work and, according to Andrew Proudfoot, "our vast experience in different business sectors."

Proudfoot notes that the design of the navigational structure was the most important part of the planning and design process. "We wanted to integrate different technologies into the site including Flash and dynamic HTML," he says, "while maintaining a similar look and feel throughout the site."

The initial design of the company Web site began with design plans and flowcharts created with Microsoft Office Word 2003 and the Microsoft Visio drawing and diagramming software.

FrontPage features

When it's time to get down to work, Proudfoot turns to Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 and spends a lot of time switching between Code and Design views. "The Design, Code, and Preview tabs allow fast viewing of how changes will affect final appearance," Proudfoot says.

When working on code, Proudfoot finds himself relying on the Find and Replace feature and referring to line numbers often. "The FrontPage 2003 table editing tools are extremely easy to use for building and editing tables," says Proudfoot. "The cell formatting features are extremely user friendly, and building forms is also relatively easy."

As a manager of several team members, Proudfoot also relies on the Save All feature in Page view: "Many times, two or three people may be working on the same site at the same time, and the Save All option ensures that no one person's work is overwritten."

Proudfoot's team also uses FrontPage for streamlined site publishing. "There is no need to select files and know which ones to upload," Proudfoot says. "FrontPage does this for you. Also, when redesigning a large site and uploading, it will give you the option to change some pages or the entire navigational structure of the site or merge both."

Proudfoot predicts that his company will continue to use FrontPage as the Web site creation and file management system that is best suited to its needs. "We have tested many other site design tools, including Macromedia Dreamweaver," Proudfoot says, "and we have found that they do not have the same ease of use, compatibility, and user friendliness as FrontPage."

Additional tools

• Microsoft Visio 2000
• Microsoft Office Word 2003