REDMOND, Wash., March 22, 2000 — Rapidly increasing momentum for Microsoft® FrontPage® 2000 has helped it surpass the combined license sales of all previous versions of the popular Web authoring tool, according to new figures released today by Microsoft Corp. Standalone license sales of the FrontPage 2000 Web site creation and management tool have climbed to 2 million since the product’s introduction just eight months ago, bringing the total number of users to more than 4 million.
Microsoft attributes this momentum to the popularity of FrontPage 2000 among a broad range of customers and to the increasing number of independent software vendors building compelling add-on products and services for the FrontPage 2000 platform. The availability of a diverse set of such products and services enables business users, consumers and Web professionals to extend FrontPage 2000 in new and innovative ways to create professional Internet and intranet sites faster and easier.
The new extensibility features of FrontPage 2000 make it easy for millions of trained developers for Visual Basic® for Applications to create tools that tightly integrate with FrontPage 2000. The range of current third-party products that work with FrontPage 2000 enrich its functionality in the areas of e-commerce, graphics and animation, scanning, document management, administration and training, and more.
“It’s really exciting to see so many users of FrontPage 2000 making the most of their Web creation experience by way of the strong relationships we’re building with independent software vendors,”
said Tom Bailey, lead product manager for FrontPage at Microsoft.
“The ease with which industry partners can build on top of FrontPage 2000 and the availability of so many powerful tools really makes for a valuable model for our customers and for the industry.”
ScanSoft, LaGarde and Hi-Software Offerings Top Latest List of FrontPage 2000 Add-Ons
The following are among the newest third-party products that extend FrontPage 2000 functionality:
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ScanSoft PaperConverter makes it fast and easy to scan printed documents and images directly into FrontPage 2000 as HTML and have the text and graphics fully editable using FrontPage.
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LaGarde’s Storefront 2000 enables FrontPage 2000 small-business customers to add rich, professional e-commerce functionality to their Web sites or create
e-commerce Web sites from scratch. -
Hi-Software’s Hi-Verify for FrontPage 2000 makes it easy for FrontPage 2000 customers to include the right meta tag information in their sites to boost the promotion of their sites with popular search engines.
“The market clearly needed a product that makes it faster and easier to scan documents with images and text and convert it directly into content for intranet and Internet-based applications,”
said John Hoye, director of product marketing at ScanSoft (Nasdaq
“SSFT”
).
“Many of our customers already use FrontPage to create their Web sites. They’ve told us they want the flexibility to access scanning and conversion capabilities directly from the authoring application toolbar. We used the FrontPage extensibility model to seamlessly integrate PaperConverter, allowing users to leverage their existing knowledge to quickly gain access to content that was formerly locked away in paper documents.”
Pricing and Availability
FrontPage 2000 is widely available in retail outlets as well as through direct market resellers and volume licensing programs. New users can acquire FrontPage 2000 for an estimated retail price of $149, which includes a $40 in-box rebate for registered users of Microsoft Office, bringing the price down to $109. Current users of FrontPage can upgrade to FrontPage 2000 for approximately $59.95. The Microsoft Office 2000 Premium Edition, which includes FrontPage 2000, is available for an estimated retail upgrade price of $449 for current users of Microsoft Office and $799 for new users. (Reseller prices may vary.)
Computer users worldwide can obtain information about Microsoft FrontPage at http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/ and Microsoft Office Premium at http://www.microsoft.com/office/ . Information about companies that make products which work with FrontPage can be found at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/articles/frontpageassociates.htm . Information about other Microsoft products can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, FrontPage and Visual Basic are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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