By Chris Jones
InfoWorld
Posted at 1:36 PM PT, Apr 4, 1996
Microsoft Corp. will dive headlong into the World Wide Web publishing market
next week with announcements of sharp price cuts on its FrontPage HTML
authoring tool, as well as new Internet Assistants and a browser extension for
Microsoft Office applications.
FrontPage, Version 1.1, will ship in late May for $149, deeply undercutting
the current $695 list price. Office 95 users will get a $40 rebate.
"At that price, they're leaving money on the table," said Joan-Carol Brigham,
senior consultant at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
"FrontPage is a powerful tool, tightly integrated with Windows, and it ties in
beautifully with the Microsoft product line."
Thus far, Adobe Systems Inc. has dominated the Web authoring and
site-management market with its Macintosh-only PageMill and SiteMill tools,
but Microsoft and other players -- such as Netscape Communications Corp.,
NaviSoft Inc., Interleaf Inc., and InContext Corp. -- have Windows tools
poised to share what promises to be a fast-growing market.
FrontPage 1.1 has an Office-like interface and is accessible from within
Office applications. It can also be used to update Office documents on
Internet and intranet sites.
New features also include HTML table support, custom page template creation,
and toolbars to set font sizes and paragraph alignments.
Also available this week are new Internet Assistants for the Microsoft Access
database and Schedule+ applications, and a browser extension, Active-Point,
for compressing PowerPoint presentation files for the Web.
A beta version of FrontPage 1.1 for Windows 95 and Windows NT will be posted
to Microsoft's Web page next week. The Internet Assistants for Access and
Schedule+ on Windows 95 are available for free from Microsoft's Web page.
ActivePoint, in beta testing, is also free and accessible from the Web page.
Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash., can be reached at (800) 426-9400 and
_http://www.microsoft.com/._