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Front Page Features
Creating a Web Site
Open
FrontPage Explorer.
Choose "File - New - FrontPage Web".
In the New FrontPage Web window will be three options:
1) a "One Page Web"
2) "Import an Existing Web"
3) From "Wizard" or "Template"
Choosing Option 1 creates a new web, with one HTML page.
Choosing Option 2 or 3 opens the corresponding Wizard and walks
you through the steps creating your new web.
After choosing the type of web to create in Step 1, you then need
to choose a title for your web. Place it in the "Choose a title
for your FrontPage web:" window. Below this window will be the
local file location that you would like to store your web. If this
location is not appropriate, choose "Change" and follow the
instructions. then "OK" and FrontPage will create the necessary
files for your new web.
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Publishing
a web
Open the
web you created on your hard drive.
In FrontPage Explorer, Choose File - Publish "FrontPage Web" and
the Publish window will appear. If your destination web does not
appear in the "Publish FrontPage Web to:" window, choose "More
Webs". Type the location of the web to be published to "yourdomain.com"
or an IP address "123.123.123.123."
In the open window. Choose "OK". If you want to only publish the
changed pages since last publishing, place a check in the "Publish
changed pages only" box.
Choose "OK".
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Creating a web "live" on your server
Follow the steps above until
FrontPage asks for the location of the new web.
In this window type your server address that your WPP has provided
for you.
It will either be in general browser form "www.mydomain.com" or an
IP address "123.123.123.123." To complete the process, follow the
same steps as above for the web's name and so forth.
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Working "live" on your www site
Open Front Page, then you will
see a box that says "open front page web"
click on "more webs" type in your www address "mydomain.com" or
an IP address "123.123.123.123." you will then be prompted for
your login name and password.
Now you are in your web site "live" on your server,
work as you always have or if your transferring your site to the
one your on now you can "import" your old site right from your old
server (provided it is still there and your old hosting company
didn't delete it yet)
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Following a Hyperlink
In FrontPage Explorer Highlight
the file that you would like to follow
Choose "Hyperlinks" from the "Views" column on the left
Your file will appear in the center of the right window with files
that link to it on the left and files that it links to on the
right.
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Importing
Files
In FrontPage Explorer with the
folder "you want to import the file to" highlighted
Choose File - Import
the Import File to FrontPage Web window will appear
Choose "Add File..." and locate your file to be imported. The file
will appear in the open window for you to make sure that the
desired destination path is correct within your web. If it is,
choose "OK"; if not, choose "Edit URL..."
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Recalculating Hyperlinks
In FrontPage Explorer. Choose
Tools - Recalculate Hyperlinks
FrontPage will then scan your web and try to fix any broken
hyperlinks. Depending on how many links you have in your web this
could take awhile.
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Verifying Hyperlinks
In FrontPage Explorer. Choose
Tools-Verify Hyperlinks-Verify"
FrontPage will then verify all of your internal hyperlinks and
also the external hyperlinks if you are signed on to the Internet.
Any errors will be reported and you will be asked if you want to
edit them. Depending on how many links you have in your web this
could take awhile.
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Creating
a Sub-Web
In FrontPage Explorer, point to
New on the File menu, and then click FrontPage Web. In the New
FrontPage Web dialog box, click One Page Web. In "Choose a title
for your FrontPage Web" box type a name for your subWeb. Click OK.
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Adding & Editing in-line Images
In FrontPage Editor.
Place your cursor where you would like your image to appear.
Choose "Insert - Image" and follow the path to the image you would
like to insert. To have text reside beside your image and flow
gently below as need, highlight the image and choose "Edit - Image
- Properties - Alignment".
Set the alignment property to left or right depending on your
needs.
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Adding Tables
In FrontPage Editor
place your cursor where you would like the table inserted.
Choose "Table - Insert Table" and set your table's properties as
needed.
There have been added to the toolbar in FP98 many shortcuts for
tables functions
for easier, quicker use, right click on the table for more
options.
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Setting Custom Backgrounds
In FrontPage Editor. Choose "File
- Page Properties - Background"
or right click on your page
To set your own background colors place a check beside "Specify
Background and Colors" and choose the desired colors. If you would
like to use an image as the page's background, "browse" to your
image file. If you would like to use the colors from another page
within your web, place a check beside Get Background and Colors
from Page, click "Browse" and find your desired source page.
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Creating
Hot Spots
In FrontPage Editor.
Insert your image as per earlier instructions.
Highlight the image and the "Image Toolbar" will appear
functional.
Choose the proper button on the toolbar for the shape desired and
trace out the portion of the image where you would like the Hot
Spot to appear.
The Hyperlink Properties window will appear for you to create your
hyperlink as per earlier instructions.
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Using Custom Counter Images
Create your Custom Counters by
creating a GIF Image with any graphics program.
For the best results use a Solid Color Background. Then Add your
numbers evenly spaced like "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9" and center them
on the background. NOTE: Transparent GIF images do not work. If
you get the numbers too close together they may not display
correctly.
In a FrontPage Web, the Hit Counter's increment file is named like
pagename.htm.cnt, and it's located in the http://your domain
name/_private folder. If it's a sub-folder of a web then the
location and name is http://your domain name/_private/FolderName/PageName.htm.cnt.
You can put the counter.GIF in there or in your images folder,
just as long as you specify the path and name in the" Hit Counter
Properties form box".
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Previewing a Web Page
While viewing a page in FrontPage
Editor, choose the "Preview" tab at the bottom, left of the
screen. Some components will not show up or view properly until
the page is saved.
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Creating Transparent GIF Images
You should do this with your
graphics program. If you would like to use FrontPage, insert your
GIF image onto your page as per earlier instructions. Highlight
the image and the Image Toolbar will appear functional. Choose
the "Make Transparent" button and click the wand on the desired
transparent color. But you can only make 1 color transparent per
page.
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Beveled button hyperlinks
You can make beveled button
hyperlinks using the Form Field Push Button. In FrontPage 98.
Simply click the Push Button icon on the tool bar to place it on
your page. Double click on the button and enter the text to
appear on the button in the Value - Label text box. Click Ok.
Right click in the dashed area, then click on Form Properties.
Click on Send to other, leaving the default at Custom, then click
on Options. In the Actions text box, enter the URL of the page you
want the visitor to go to.
Click on Ok.
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Creating a "Back Button" with an image
So that the image link will be
compatible in both Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers, the
image must be contained within a form. The easiest method to
accomplish this is to create a Form Image. To do so, go to
FrontPage Editor and click on Insert, Form Field, Image and select
the image to be used for the link. Click OK to create the form
image. Then, right click inside the dashed boundary containing the
image. Click Form Properties, click "Send to other:" then
options, then enter into the Action text box the following:
javascript:history. back()
Then, click OK twice to return to the Editor. Save your form and
try it out.
Note: While the image is functional in Netscape, visitors will not
get a visual indication that the image is a link, " mouse over" as
they do in Internet Explorer. Therefore, you may want to put some
text in to alert visitors that the image is a link.
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Forcing Pages to Reload
While most Web pages are
relatively stable, you may have some that change frequently. For
example, you might have a page that dynamically displays your
company's stock quote, changing on a minute-by-minute basis
throughout the day.
Unfortunately, if the page is cached on the user's machine, more
recent versions may never appear. What you need in this case is a
way to tell the browser not to cache the page.
You can do this easily with a meta tag. Just add the following to
the<head> section of your page:
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
Now, every time a user hits the page, the latest version will be
downloaded from the server.
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Add tables from Word or Microsoft Excel to your Web
page
If you've created a table in
Microsoft Word or Excel, you may easily add it to a Web page in
your FrontPage site. Simply select and drag the table from the
Office application and drop it on your target Web page in the
FrontPage Editor, or copy the table from the Office application,
switch to your target Web page in the FrontPage Editor, and choose
Paste from the FrontPage Editor's Edit menu. Either way, the table
is added to your Web page and in doing so, FrontPage automatically
generates the code behind the scenes, so you never have to worry
about writing HTML! You may then easily use all of FrontPage's
table editing and table-drawing tools to edit your table and its
contents.
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Putting
the insertion point between two tables
When you have two tables butted
together vertically, it can be hard to insert a line between them.
To do so, place the cursor after the content of the top table's
last cell and press [Ctrl][Enter].
Similarly, to put the insertion point before a table at the top of
your document, place the cursor before the content of the first
cell and press [Ctrl][Enter].
In FrontPage 97, if this cell is empty, you'll have to type a
character in it before hitting [Ctrl][Enter].
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Removing Page Margins
in FrontPage
By default, FrontPage includes a small margin along the top and
left margins of your page. You can remove this margin easily (for
most browsers
at least). To do so, right-click on an empty area of the page and
select Page Properties... from the popup menu. Then, click the
Margins tab. Enable either or both of the check boxes on this page
(Specify Top Margin and Specify Left Margin). Leave the default
value (zero) to eliminate the margins. You can achieve the same
effect by editing the <body> tag in your page's HTML as follows:
<body topmargin="0" leftmargin="0">
Note: Netscape Navigator ignores these settings.
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Cleaning Up the Tasks
View History
Completed tasks normally disappear from the Tasks View in
FrontPage Explorer whenever you refresh the display or close the
FrontPage Web. If you enable Task History on the View menu,
however, all tasks, completed or not, will be appear in the task
list. If you use the Task History to maintain a log for your Web
site project, you may want to remove completed tasks from the
history file as well. Select a task and choose Delete… from the
Edit menu to remove it for good.
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Controlling which
form fields to save
When you inspect the results file of a FrontPage form you've
created, you may discover a field name called "B1" that has no
data associated with it. This "phantom" field is actually your
form's Submit button. While passing this field name to your form's
results file shouldn't cause you any problems, you can easily
instruct FrontPage not to pass the name to the data file.
To do so, right-click within the dashed area of the form on your
page in the FrontPage Editor and select Form Properties... from
the context menu. In the resulting dialog box, click the
Options... button. Then, in the Options For Saving Results Of Form
dialog, click the Saved Fields tab. Delete B1 (and any other
unwanted fields), then click OK twice to return to your page, and
save your page.
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Designating
a custom form confirmation page
When you create an online form, FrontPage automatically generates
a confirmation page. This page, which appears after the user
clicks the Submit button, lists the data he or she entered and
includes a link back to the form. If you don't like the standard
page, you can create your own and instruct FrontPage to display
your custom page instead. With your form page open in the
FrontPage Editor and your mouse cursor positioned within the
dashed line area of the form, right click your mouse and select
the Forms Properties dialog from the resulting dropdown menu.
Then, in the Form Properties dialog, click the Options button, and
in the resulting Options for Saving Results of Form dialog box,
select the Confirmation Page tab and enter the URL of your
confirmation page. By the way, the URL you enter can be for any
page, not just a true confirmation page.
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Erasing Table
Borders in FrontPage '98
Tables are a great way to format information on Web pages. With
tables, you can easily align columns of information, the fields
within your online forms, and other page elements.
The table-drawing tools in FrontPage 98 make tables even more
useful. Using one of these new table tools, the Eraser, you can
remove cell boundaries with a click of the wrist . To do so, first
click the Eraser toolbar button on the Table toolbar in the
FrontPage Editor. Then, drag across any internal boundary of a
table to select it. When you release the mouse button, the
boundary will disappear and the adjacent cells will merge into
one. To turn off eraser mode, click the Eraser icon again, click
outside the table, or double-click within the table.
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Establish passwords
that protect
If your FrontPage web server is on a network, you'll probably want
to use the Explorer Tools menu's Permissions... command to
establish passwords that protect your webs from intruders.
However, you may not be aware that the permissions you set in
FrontPage can be easily sidestepped by anyone who knows the
network path to your web documents (and they aren't hard to
find). An intruder can simply use the Other Location tab in the
Editor's Open File dialog box to navigate to and access an HTML
page without ever opening a FrontPage web. Therefore, it's
imperative that you ask your system administrator to set up
substantial network password protection for your web resources.
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FrontPage Menus Versus
Buttons
Choosing a FrontPage 98 menu item doesn’t always yield the same
results as clicking on the associated toolbar button. Case in
point: the New command. Clicking the New button on the toolbar in
the FrontPage Editor creates and opens a single blank page in the
FrontPage Editor, but choosing New… from the File menu opens a
dialog box that lets you choose from a number of new page
templates, including frames page templates, for automatically
creating pages that include forms, multiple columns and aligned
text, frames, and more. As a rule of thumb, when the actions
differ, the toolbar button is more likely to quickly yield a
single result, while a menu item may reveal more options .
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Manage your site
with improved views
FrontPage 98 offers you a variety of ways to view the files in
your FrontPage Web site. Each view offers its own advantages when
you perform Web site maintenance and management tasks. For
instance, if you highlight a file in the Folders View, the All
Files View, the Navigation View or the Hyperlinks View, that file
will remain selected when you switch to one of the other views.
You might do this, for example, if you find a file in the All
Files View that you want to move from one folder into another
folder. Select the file in the All Files View, switch to the
Folders View, and then drag the file to its new location.
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Making form
text fields wrap in Navigator
With text boxes in forms or discussion forums, there’s a key
difference in the way Microsoft Internet Explorer handles text
entry from the way Netscape handles it. Whereas IE automatically
wraps the text inside a text box, Netscape’s text simply runs off
the edge without wrapping.
Fortunately, there’s an easy solution. First, create the text box
using Frontpage Editor. Then, click the HTML tab to switch to HTML
view. As part of the coding for the textbox, you should see
something like this:
<textarea rows="12" name="Contact" cols="8" ></textarea>
To ensure that text will wrap correctly in Netscape, type
wrap="virtual"
directly into the HTML coding. It should look like this:
<textarea rows="12" name="Contact" cols="8" wrap="virtual">
Now the text will wrap correctly in both browsers.
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Making text flow around
an image
If you want your text to flow around an image, you’ll need to add
an alignment setting to your image. Right-click the image and
choose Image Properties... from the context menu. Then, choose
Left or Right from the Alignment dropdown list. (With left
alignment, the text will flow around the image’s right side; with
right alignment, just the opposite will happen.)
To add space between the image and the text, enter numbers in the
Horizontal Space and Vertical Space fields.
If you prefer to work directly in HTML, here’s what the <img>
tag would look like:
<img src="yourfile.gif" border=0 width%0 height00 align=left
hspace=5 vspace=5>
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Quickly modify page
elements
In FrontPage 98, many of the characteristics assigned to a page
element--such as paragraph formatting, image attributes, or
FrontPage Component attributes--are selected by manipulating
various settings in the corresponding feature's Properties dialog
box. To reach the various Properties dialog boxes more quickly,
simply use your mouse and right-click on the page element in the
FrontPage Editor. When you do, a context-sensitive menu will pop
up, allowing you to open that element's Properties dialog in order
to make changes easily.
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Quickly open a linked page in FrontPage Editor
When you’re working on an HTML file in FrontPage Editor (in Normal
view), you can quickly open an additional existing page by holding
the [Ctrl] key and clicking on the link in your document. This is
easier and quicker than opening the file from the File menu.
In Preview view, however, clicking a link only temporarily opens
the linked page. When you return to Normal or HTML view, the
linked file will not remain open.
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Seeing exactly how your images will appear
It’s no secret that images that look great in Image Composer—and
even in FrontPage Editor—can look much different in a browser.
One way to see exactly how your images will look is to reconfigure
FrontPage to open GIFs and JPGs in your browser instead of Image
Composer when you double-click on them. To do this, choose
Options... from FrontPage Explorer’s Tools menu. Then click the
Configure Editors tab. Select GIF from the list and click the
Modify... button. Then, click the Browse... button and navigate to
your copy of Internet Explorer. (The default path is C:\Program
Files\Internet Explorer\Iexplore.exe, where C is your hard disk
letter.) Click OK, then repeat the process with JPG. Now,
whenever you double-click an image, it will open in the browser.
To edit an image, launch Image Composer first, then open the file
as you normally would.
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Sending Form Results to E-mail
When you create a form in FrontPage 98, you may choose how you
would like your form results to be submitted and handled. For
instance, you may choose to have results sent to any file on any
server that you have designated, or--new to FrontPage 98--you may
now also have the results sent directly to an E-mail address. To
do this, double-click the Submit button to access the Push Button
Properties dialog box, then click the Form… button to access the
Form Properties dialog. In this dialog, simply enter the address
in the E-mail Address text field.
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Single
space returns
When you hit [Enter] when working on a page in FrontPage 98
Editor's Normal Tab view, the program inserts the equivalent of a
double space return, marked in the HTML view by the </p> tag.
Depending on your design needs, this may be too much space to
insert between items on a page. Fortunately, it's equally simple
to insert a single space instead. To create a single space return,
marked by the HTML tag <br>, hold down [Shift] while pressing
[Enter].
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Tracking down
FrontPage's custom Dictionary
On occasion, you may want to edit the file where FrontPage stores
words you add to its custom dictionary. For example, you might
want to delete an erroneous entry. Or maybe back up the file.
The file you need to edit is custom.dic, but don’t look in your
FrontPage directory. FrontPage actually shares the same dictionary
files as your other Office applications, so the file is located in
C:\Windows\Msapps\Proof\ (where C is your hard drive letter).
Custom.dic is a plain text file, so you can edit it with any word
processor.
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Using Cascading Style Sheets to change your form
buttons
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a Web standard supported primarily
by the "version 4" browsers. It lets you control dozens of aspects
of your pages’ appearance. One easy thing you can do with CSS is
change the font and colors of your form buttons. To do so, first
insert a button as you ordinarily would. Then, right-click on the
button and choose Form Field Properties... from the context menu.
Click the Style... button to open the Style dialog box. To change
the font of the button caption, switch to the Font page of the
dialog and choose a new font from the Primary Font dropdown list.
(You should also choose a "generic" secondary font, such as
sans-serif, in case your primary font is not available on the
user’s machine.) To change the color scheme, switch to the Colors
page. The foreground color you choose here will be the text color;
the background color will be the color of the button itself. Click
OK twice to return to your page. Since CSS hasn’t been
universally adopted, your results will vary. However, older
browsers should simply ignore your specifications and style the
button as usual.
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Viewing the Navigation View
If you have a small computer monitor, or a large FrontPage Web
site, the pages in the FrontPage Explorer’s Navigation View may
become unwieldy. Two buttons on the FrontPage Explorer toolbar can
help, though. The first, the Rotate button, will allow you to
rotate the site map from a top-down orientation to a left-to-right
orientation. The other button, the Size to Fit button, reduces the
entire navigational map to fit within the window space available.
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Using FTP Programs and FrontPage '98
You can use FTP programs and Front Page 98, as long as you
understand how the programs differ, let me explain:
When you create your web pages with FP98 the program also makes
what they call "hidden files" or more specifically configuration
files, i.e. _private, _vti_bin, _vti_cnf, _vti_log, _vti_pvt, _vti_txt,
You will not see these files with FP98 because they're hidden.
With an FTP program you will see all the "hidden" or
configuration files.
When you make your web pages these "hidden" files also become
configuration files for the operating system you have. If you are
running Windows 95 then these files are configured for Windows 95,
if you are running DOS then these files are configured for DOS.
The problem is when you upload your web pages with an FTP program
you assume these "hidden" files must also be uploaded. If your web
server is Unix and you just uploaded configuration files for
Windows95, WHAM, your server crashes!!!
In short if you use an FTP program with Front Page 98 only upload
your .html, .htm, images or cgi scripts.
NEVER NEVER NEVER upload the "hidden files"!!!
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