According to http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/pages/Authoring/FrontPage98/
“More than half a million Web builders use Microsoft FrontPage 98, and
more than 1.5 million people use some version of the product,
according to Microsoft.” This may be out of date…there was no “last
updated” date.
However, something to note:
If you are using the term "user" in the sense of anyone who uses
FrontPage, precise numbers may be unattainable as this is not a static
number. Users grow dynamically every moment that I type. However,
you might check out the Microsoft webpage for some *slightly* biased
number projections. Another problem with determining numbers is that
there is a large amount of FrontPage users have invalid bootlegged
copies, a severe problem with MS products. And almost no one ever
bothers to register them.
If it is any help, I have found in my own experience that about half
of the webmasters I know use this program, whereas the other half do
not. This is probably because FrontPage adds gobs of unnecessary code
that aggravates those fluent in HTML. It also provides non-universal
code, that often does not translate well in browsers like Netscape. I
personally use FrontPage only as a way to gauge the end look of the
pages I design. I also find myself deleting more code from it than I
would like. I have found that businesses that can afford MS programs
will use the medium simply because it is a time saver and a medium
that provides web publishing capabilities to even the most computer
illiterate, and requires no HTML programming.
I know this didn’t exactly answer your question, nor was it really
meant to. I wish you luck in approximating a number, but I simply
can’t resist commenting when I feel that determining a set static
number is impossible. I will instead give a general answer: lots of
people. It is becoming “cool” to have your own little place on the
web and people do not want to spend the time it takes writing HTML
when they can fork over a few hundred bucks to have the code written
for them…and sometimes poorly at that. I will also confess that I
rather enjoy the speed FrontPage gives. I am sure if you consult the
MS site, they will give you an approximate (huge) number along the
same rhetoric lines of American Online’s: “Everyone loves AOL.” |
