MS FrontPage —

Optimizing HTML

In a bid to satisfy Web site developers who think FrontPage adds too much unnecessary code to Web pages, FrontPage 2003 features an HTML cleanup feature that lets you strip out extraneous HTML so your pages download faster. (Extraneous code is anything your page doesn't need to function in a browser. This can be something simple like a comment tag that developers use to communicate with each other, or the code FrontPage adds to administrate your pages using FrontPage Server Extensions.) To see the cleanup feature, select Tools » Optimize HTML.

FrontPage lets you optimize HTML when you're designing your site (meaning in your development environment) or when you publish your site to a live Web server. If you take the latter path, FrontPage cleans up only the HTML that resides on the server. Your development site stays as is.

There's no reason to optimize HTML at design time. If you do so, you could permanently disable even very basic features you've added and wreak havoc throughout your site. The only time you should even contemplate using the Optimize HTML feature is when you're ready to publish your site. Publishing Your site covers the ins and outs of optimizing.