Use Xara Web Designer 7 Premium to create .asp pages

[Trillian]

I asked this question of tech support and they sent me all kinds of links. The only useful one was that Xara-designed webs/pages could be exported as .asp. Oddly the "first" page you export it said had to be .html but the rest could be anything.

I have a film review website linked to a database. Will probably need to change that to SQL soon. My first page has a database results area and needs to be .asp - so that sounds like it's out right away.

Even if I can "export as .asp" there doesn't seem to be any info on actually linking the pages up with database results, let alone how one would edit content if a link was established and published.

Maybe I'm expecting too much from Web Designer - but I love Xara products and thought this would be the answer.

For all its limitations, FrontPage (with a lot of creative help from Webstyle & Xara) did everything I needed it to do.

Does anyone have any answers, resources or ideas for me? If WD is the answer I'd love to see the documentaion becuase I need to transition and soon.

[pauland]

Maybe I'm expecting too much from Web Designer

Yes, whatever made you think it would handle using asp to connect to a database?

You can rename the html page to be asp, and I guess you might add some kind of widget or HTML snippet to do the database interface, but WD isn't going to magically do this for you.

For all its limitations, FrontPage (with a lot of creative help from Webstyle & Xara) did everything I needed it to do.

I guess it didn't otherwise you wouldn't be using WD.

I need to transition and soon.

I'm not sure why if FrontPage is meeting those needs.

As good as Xara is, it's not a program that does everything that people need to do on the web. It's great at what it does, but needs some effort to integrate other technologies. There is no one "silver bullet" technology.

[Soquili]

Active Server Pages (.asp) require code to access a database and populate fields and/or update the database from the data within fields on a page. Front Page writes the code for you.

Xara Web Designer is not a substitute for Front Page or other application. It is a vector drawing application that is optimised for creating WYSIWYG web pages/sites. If you are proficient at writing code (either VBScript or JScript) you can use placeholders to insert code snipits similar to those created by Front Page.

[Trillian]

I thought perhaps it would handle .asp becuase it's being billed as "the" answer to web design and incorporates all the Xara products I currently use. I could find no info about creating .asp pages/database interface however, that's why I asked the Q. Didn't expect magic. I'm not using WD yet, just trying to decide if it would do what I needed it to, expected to write code, just saw no mention of this other than "widgets" and placeholders that didn't sound sophisticated enough for my needs. Reason for transitioning from FP is that most webhosts (and Microsoft) no longer support it or do so grudingly. Tip: You might conisder not being so flip in your responses.

[Trillian]

Thanks. Will probably have to go with Expressions Web or silmiar.

[pauland]

Tip: You might conisder not being so flip in your responses.

They wouldn't be so much fun to write then.

I think xaras software must be the record-holder for having people assuming it does stuff it does not. Fortunately, you didn't do as many do and buy it and then discover it doesn't do everything.

Anyway, good luck.