Start Using FrontPage 2000

The FrontPage Development Environment. By looking at the .gif image you should be able to see the menus and windows that are typically displayed in FrontPage. The Views bar/window on the left can be used to work with the current web in a variety of ways. Each of the icons will put you into a different view of the web. The following table gives you a quick overview of the purpose of each icon.

Icon	Description
Page	This view allows the user to develop an individual webpage in a manner that is analogous to developing documents in Word.
Folders	This view gives much more detailed information about the files and folders in the current web.
Reports	This page gives a summary of a large variety of the attributes and features of the current web such as info about links and hyperlinks speed of download age of files nature of images
Navigation	This view helps you see the overall structure of the linkages between pages and their levels relative to each other. This page is also useful for determining page titles.
Hyperlinks	When you have selected a particular file, clicking on this icon will give you a view of all of the hyperlinks to and from this file.
Tasks	This is a page that helps you manage the tasks involved in developing and maintaining this web.

The Folder List. The folder list is lists the directories and subdirectories associated with a particular web. FrontPage likes to have all of your webs located in the My Webs directory in the My Documents folder. When you create a new web it is usually placed further along this path in another folder/subdirectory. You will notice in the image above there are two subdirectories with names _private and images. The _private directory is often used for information that you obtain from one of your pages that you want to keep private from all the other users. The images directory usually contains all of the images associated with the web. It is usually worthwhile to to keep these sorts of things separate in order to facilitate updating and maintenance.

Starting a New Web. Each person in class should start a new web that is about themselves. You do this by

clicking on the File menu

select the New entry

when the submenu appears select Web.

You should get a dialogue window that looks like the following.

Notice that you have several basic templates you can choose from. Notice that you can also specify the location of the new web by either adding it to the current web or typing in a new path.

Since this first web will be about yourself you should click on the personal web and specify the path where you want it located. The program will take some time to develop the web, but after a little wait you should see a screen that looks like the following.

Notice that you have a folder list with several example folders. In addition, I have expanded the images folder to show you that it contains three sample photos from "your" life. All of this is done to illustrate some typical pages and their construction. You should double click on the index.htm entry in the folder list. This is your homepage. To verify this you should click on the navigation icon in the Views window. Notice how the title is different from the name of the file. The navigation view is the easiest place to change the title of a page.

At this point there are two major ways you are likely to proceed.

Create your own color scheme and use your own background colors/images

Use one of the FrontPage themes.

Since this is likely to be your first time using FrontPage we will make use of one of the themes that is provided. You should

Select the Format menu

Select the themes entry on the menu

You will get a dialogue window that looks like the following. If you wanted to develop your own pages to a much greater extent you would have used the background item on this Format menu.

I have selected the Expedition theme, but you should click on different themes in order to select the one you want.

Using these themes is a very quick way to develop a much higher quality web. It is also possible to modify these themes, but that can be done on your own time. In general, using themes makes for a more complicated web because of all the extra images used for things like banners and navigation buttons. But there is no getting around the reward of using them for the little effort they require.

At this point you should click on each of the different tabs at the bottom of the page development window. This will show you the HTML and preview your page where you can try out the links. In order to navigate in the Normal or development view you need to control-click the link.

Notice how photo.htm contains a couple photos. We will learn to modify these and add new photos in the next lesson. The favorite.htm page has favorite hyperlinks primarily to external webs. The interest.htm page has started a list of interests.

You should start making your webpage your own by changing the interests to something you want.

Inserting and Modifying Hyperlinks. On the favorite.htm page you want to start putting in some of your favorite links.

Change the words The Microsoft Network to something you are more interested in.

Highlight what used to be The Microsoft Network link and then

Click on the Insert menu

Click on the Hyperlink item

You should get a dialogue window that looks like the following.

Notice that the link is currently http://www.msn.com/.

You can change this by using the little globe icon next to this textbox to surf the net and find a different link.

You can also click on the folder icon to find another file that is on your computer.

Now that you have done this you can modify or insert other links.

More on the Navigation View. I want to include more on this view because it is so important. This is the place where you determine the titles for your pages and how you expect them to inter-relate to each other in the web.

The Navigation View for this course web is contained in the diagram below.

You must first have at least started and saved a particular page with some name ???????.htm.

Then you select the Navigation view

Then you click on the file in the Folder List and drag it over into the Navigation view window and place the file under/next to/on top of another file or files.

You can change the title, which is usually different from the name.

Typically, the file at the top in the hierarchy is your homepage and it is named index.htm. You can build quite elaborate relationship structures in this way.

Inserting Navigation Bars. Regardless of whether you are using a theme you may want to have some sort of web navigation structure that is consistent from page to page within the web. This can be accomplished using the Navigation Bar item in the Insert menu. These bars can be located anyplace on each page in the web, but they are usually located either on the header, strictly to one side or at the bottom of each page.

Click on the Insert menu

Select the Navigation Bar item.

You should get a dialogue window that looks like the following.

Notice the radio/option buttons on the left. As you select one of the options you will get an image that represents its meaning in the diagram to the button's left. In addition you can select items from the Additional Pages column of check boxes. You can also modify their orientation and appearance.

The hierarchy that is used is the same structure you've been developing in the Navigation view. The titles on the links or buttons are the same as the titles used in the Navigation view.

Because there are so many possible arrangements you are probably best off experimenting to see what happens with particular selections.