If you want to quickly create a hyperlink to an external page, click FrontPage Editor's Create Or Edit Hyperlink button, then click the Web Browser button (it looks like a globe with a magnifying glass on top). Your Web browser will open. Navigate to the page you want to link to,and then switch back to FrontPage Editor and close the Create Hyperlink dialog box.
That's it! The title of the page will become the text of the link, which will connect to the page you just visited. Of course, you can change the link text if you'd like.
Inside Microsoft FrontPage
Here's a quick way to preview pages. In FrontPage Explorer, select the file you want to preview. This can be in Folders, All Files, Navigation, or Hyperlinks view. Choose Edit | Copy, and then switch to your browser. Click in the Address or Location text box, choose Edit | Paste, and press [Enter].
You can use the same technique to preview images in the browser.
Keith Weinheimer
When you're working in FrontPage Editor, you often need to switch between Normal, HTML, and Preview modes. While it's easy enough to click the tabs at the bottom of the Editor window, you can also use a keyboard shortcut.
Just hold down [Ctrl] and press [Page Up] to cycle to the left or [Page Down] to cycle to the right.
Grant Edlin
If your Web site changes locations, you'd probably like a way to move users from the old URL to the new one. Doing so is very easy. In FrontPage Editor, pen Default.htm at the old URL, then click the HTML tab to switch to HTML view. Just above the </head> tag, add the following line:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=http://www.newurl.com">
where 10 is the number of seconds and http://www.newurl.com is the page to jump to.
You should also include a regular hyperlink on the same page for those users who don't want to wait 10 seconds.
ZD Journal's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
A common practice among Web designers is to maximize the compression of JPEG images in their preferred graphics software application and then import the images into their FrontPage Web. However, FrontPage is set up by default to further compress the inserted images by as much as 75 percent, which noticeably degrades the quality of the image after the page is saved. To prevent this overcompression, right-click on the image that you just inserted into FrontPage Editor (prior to saving the page) and select Image Properties from the context menu. Change the JPEG compression setting to 100 percent, which will prevent FrontPage from performing any unnecessary compression.
Bill Phillips
Have you ever wanted to center a graphic in the browser window? Doing so is actually quite easy. In FrontPage Editor, just click the HTML tab and enter the following code between the <body> and </body> tags:
<table border="0" width="100%" height="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td valign="middle" align="center">
<img border="0" height="355" width="616"
lowsrc="images/loading.gif" src="images/welcome.gif"
alt="Welcome">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Of course, you'll need to enter the correct image names and height and width values.
Martin Suchym
If you create a text navigation bar in FrontPage that includes Home, Up, Back, and Next buttons, those buttons will be labeled Home, Up, Back, and Next, just as you would expect.
But what if you want to give them different names--in the case of a non-English-language site, for example? To do so, choose Web Settings from the Tools menu in FrontPage Explorer or FrontPage 2000 and click on the Navigation tab. Here, you can name the navigation buttons anything you'd like. To change them back, click the Default button.
ZD Tips
When you create a Web site that includes frames, you can easily use a hyperlink in one frame to change the contents of a second frame. But you may often want to change two frames with one click.
To do so, add the following parameter to the HTML that defines the link:
onClick="parent.frame2.location.href="target2.htm"
The complete HTML for the link would then look something like this:
<a href="target1.htm" target="frame1" onClick="parent.frame2.location.href="target2.htm">Click Here</a>
Of course, you'll need to substitute the names of your actual frames and actual target documents.
ZD Journal
How can you tell that your Web site will look right in, say, Netscape Navigator 2.0 on the Mac? One way to find out is Web Site Garage's Browser Snapshot service (www.websitegarage.com). For just a few dollars, the service will create actual screen shots of your Web page in 18 different browser/platform/monitor combinations.
The only downside (other than the cost) is that Browser Snapshot creates static views of your pages, so you don't get to preview any interactive features.
Another option is the shareware program Browserola, which bills itself as the world's first and only browser emulator. The program analyzes the HTML on your pages and temporarily disables tags that don't work in the browser you're emulating. To download a copy, visit http://www.codo.com/browserola/
ZD Journals' Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
Bookmarks, those navigation elements that allow users to hyperlink to content within a single Web page, are not negotiated in the same way by all Web browsers. Earlier versions of both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer are case sensitive when it comes to hyperlinks and to bookmarks and authors should take care when using these elements on their Web site. One easy way to assure that your bookmarks will always work is to use the bookmark drop -down list box in the Hyperlinks Properties dialog when creating links to bookmarks on your pages.
Microsoft FrontPage Team
One of the most versatile methods of creating a navigation system between pages is to use an image map. Image maps give you more design flexibility than single-image hyperlinks, and they’re almost as easy to create, thanks to FrontPage. See:
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/resources/imgmap.htm
Microsoft FrontPage Team
Add color and interest to your Web pages with very little expense in terms of download times by using background images or watermarks. In this article we show you how to create your own backgrounds and watermarks. See how at:
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/resources/backgrnd.htm
ZD Journal's Inside Microsoft FrontPage
Like all the other Office 2000 applications, FrontPage 2000 lets you quickly customize its user interface. You can add commands to any menu or any toolbar and even create your own toolbar of commonly used commands.
To get started choose Customize from the Tools menu--or just click in the empty gray area to the right of the menu bar or any toolbar. Click the Commands tab if it's not already selected.
The scrolling list on the left shows various categories of commands, and the scrolling list on the right shows the commands within the chosen category. Once you've found the command you want to add, simply drag it to the menu or toolbar where it should appear. (When you drag it to a menu, that menu will drop down, allowing you to position the command wherever you want it to appear.
The Customize dialog box also lets you customize the icons and/or text for any command. Choose the command--on a menu or toolbar, not in the Customize dialog box--and click Modify Selection. The menu that pops up lets you change a dozen different aspects of how the command appears.
ZD Tips
The ToolBox is a tabbed selection box on the ActiveX Control Pad that holds ActiveX controls. You can add additional controls and tabs in order to customize your ToolBox. To do so, right-click on a spot that's outside the ToolBox and that already contains controls . Then, select New Page from the resulting pop-up menu. A new, blank tab will appear in the ToolBox.
To add a control, right-click on the newly created tab and select Additional Controls... from the pop-up menu. The Additional Controls dialog box will appear, listing all of the controls you've installed on your system and that you can add to the ToolBox. Simply select the check box next to the control you want to add, and click OK to accept the changes. You can now see the new controls on the ToolBox.
The Cobb Group
Last week's tip described two ways to make your Web's navigation tree fit in the space available in FrontPage's Navigation view. If those techniques aren't enough, you have a third option: to only display part of the tree at one time.
In Navigation view, each parent page's icon includes a small minus-sign button at the bottom. By clicking that button (which then turns into a plug sign), you can hide all the child pages beneath the page. Clicking the button again, as you might expect, makes the pages reappear.
FrontPage 2000 adds one more option. If you right-click on a page and choose View Subtree Only from the shortcut menu, FrontPage will hide all the pages in the Web except the one you selected and its child pages. An up-arrow icon above the page lets you make the rest of the Web visible again.
Sue Drake
If you have a large Web site--or a small monitor--you've probably discovered that your Web's navigation tree (the graphical chart of your Web's structure) more than fills up the space available in Navigation view. Fortunately, there are a couple of easy ways you can make the tree fit.
The easiest way is to right-click on an open area of the navigation pane and choose Size To Fit from the shortcut menu. (In FrontPage 2000, choose Zoom | Size To Fit from the shortcut menu. Note: FrontPage 2000 also lets you zoom to specified percentages, from 25 percent to 150 percent).
Also on the shortcut menu is the Rotate command. Choosing this command will make your top-to-bottom navigation tree flow from left to right across the screen. Oftentimes, choosing this command will make the whole structure fit.
ZD Tips
Have you ever run out of hard disk space and wondered what else you can delete off your hard drive? Or perhaps you just want your system to work as efficiently as possible.
Unlike most other Windows programs, FrontPage 98 stores its temporary files (cache) in its own "temp" subdirectory, typically located at "C:\Program Files\Microsoft FrontPage\temp." Unfortunately, there's no provision in FrontPage 98 for cleaning this temporary directory out, so it just continues to build up. If you've been working with FrontPage for a while, this directory could be relatively large!
To clean out this temp subdirectory, simply use Windows Explorer to locate the FrontPage temp subdirectory; then select and delete all its contents (don't delete the temp subdirectory itself).
And, in case you're wondering, Microsoft corrected this problem in FrontPage 2000, which has a built-in provision for deleting the contents of this temp subdirectory cache.
Chris Whitehead
How fast will your FrontPage-generated pages load? To get a rough estimate,look at the lower-right corner of the FrontPage Editor (or FrontPage 2000)window. A time (in seconds) will be displayed there, indicating the estimated download time. In FrontPage 98, the speed is based on a 28.8Kbps connection. In FrontPage 2000, clicking on the time display brings up a context menu that lets you change the speed that the calculation is based on -- from 14.4Kbps to a T3 connection.
ZD Tips
FrontPage bases every HTML page you create on a template file. By modifying this template, you can control many of the default settings on your HTML documents, such as background colors and meta tags. In both FrontPage 98 and FrontPage 2000, the template file is called Normal.htm. FrontPage 98 stores the file in C:\Program Files\ Microsoft FrontPage\Pages\Normal.tem\. In FrontPage 2000, the file is saved in the directory \Templates\1033\Pages\normal.tem\ within your Office 2000 directory.
To edit the template, you'll need to open it from within FrontPage. (Double-clicking on the file icon will simply open it in Internet Explorer.) Once you've made your changes to Normal.htm, choose Save from the File menu. You might expect FrontPage to save your changes automatically, but instead, it assumes that you're saving a new document based on normal.htm, not changing the template itself. In the Save As File dialog box, then, type Normal in the File Name text box. When you click Save, FrontPage will warn you that you're about to overwrite an existing file; click Yes. From now on, whenever you create a new document in FrontPage, it will reflect the formatting options you've saved in normal.htm.
ZD Tips
Have you ever tried to edit the HTML code in one of FrontPage 98's shared borders? At first glance, this code is inaccessible. If you look at the HTML of a page that includes a shared border, you won't find what you're looking for.
To edit the shared border's HTML, go to FrontPage Explorer and choose Web Settings from the Tools menu. Click the Advanced tab and then select the Show Documents In Hidden Directories check box. Click OK to continue. FrontPage will refresh the display, and you'll see a new directory called _borders. Inside, you'll find an HTML page that corresponds to each border you've enabled: top.htm, bottom.htm, left.htm, and/or right.htm. You can open and edit each of these files in FrontPage Editor.
Greg Krieser
You've found a great JavaScript routine on the Web that you want to use in one of your sites. So, you select the code, copy it to the clipboard, and then paste it into FrontPage 2000's HTML view. When you do so, however, all sorts of odd formatting characters appear intermingled with the code--or FrontPage replaces certain characters with obscure HTML codes.
The problem? FrontPage 2000 tries to preserve the formatting of text you paste into a page--and it doesn't matter whether you paste that text in Normal view or HTML view. While it's sometimes nice to preserve formatting in Normal view, it makes no sense to do so in HTML view.
To get around the problem, launch Notepad (by choosing Start | Programs | Accessories | Notepad) and paste the text into that program first. Then, select and copy the text, return to FrontPage, and paste it in a second time.
In Normal mode, the process is easier. After you've pasted in formatted text, simply choose Remove Formatting from the Format menu.
ZD Tips
Did you ever copy an image file to one of your Web directories on your hard disk and find that it is not there when you want to incorporate it into a page?
To get FrontPage to recognize the file, switch to FrontPage Explorer (or Folders view in FrontPage 2000) and choose Refresh from the View menu. When you switch back to FrontPage Editor (Page view in FrontPage 2000), your file will now display when you ask for it.
Sue Smith
As you work on a Web, FrontPage automatically indexes all the text on your pages. This index is used by the search bot when you add a search form to your Web. Occasionally, however, the text index can become outdated, and the search form will return bad results. (For example, it might list a page in the search results that no longer exists.)
To update the index, just choose Recalculate Hyperlinks from the Tools menu in FrontPage Explorer. If that doesn't help, try the procedure outlined in this Knowledge Base article:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q170/9/75.asp
Zd Journal's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
Are you looking for a basic introduction to FrontPage concepts but don't want to spend a lot of money? Then, surf on over to Microsoft's K-12 Education Web site at
http://www.microsoft.com/education/k12/classroom/tutorial.htm
There, you'll find some excellent--and free--FrontPage 98 and FrontPage 2000 tutorials. Although they're geared toward K-12 classes, they're useful to the rest of us as well.
Kevin J. Judge
The free FrontPage 98 Themes and Web Templates Pack gives you eight new professionally designed themes and new Web templates, including the Group and Team Webs created specifically for collaborative intranet users. To download this free add-on, visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/resources/ttpack.htm
ZD Journal's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
Microsoft has recently released FrontPage 98b, a maintenance upgrade that fixes some minor problems. You should upgrade if you've noticed the FrontPage Editor altering HTML tables you created in another HTML editor, if you notice that FrontPage Editor has altered text level formatting or hyperlink colors, if you create image maps in FrontPage Editor without using FrontPage Explorer, if you use Windows 98, or if you develop FrontPage-based applications using design-time controls. For more information--or to download the upgrade--visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/resources/98update.htm
The Cobb Group's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
You've probably discovered that you can drag and drop page elements around in the FrontPage Editor. But did you know that you can drag elements from other open applications? For example, if you drag a group of cells in from Microsoft Excel, FrontPage will format them as a table. What's more, the other application doesn't even have to be open. If you drag a document icon from the desktop into the FrontPage Editor, the program will extract the content and format it as HTML.
ZD Journal's Inside Microsoft FrontPage
Would you like to make one of your Web images look like an old, yellowed photograph? Or perhaps put your face in the middle of a $100 bill? Or make an image look like it's on fire?
Now you can with a free Web-based service called WebFX. WebFX takes any image on the Web and applies one of several dozen effects to it. The new image appears in your browser, and you can then download it to your hard disk.
WebFX is located at:
http://cs.sonoma.edu/kendrick/webfx/.
Inside Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft provides an excellent peer-to-peer news group for FrontPage users. Several Microsoft MVPs (product experts) monitor the group and offer expert answers and advice. Members of the news group are also happy to do site checks to make sure a site looks good with various hardware and browser configurations. Be sure to visit microsoft.public.frontpage.client.
The Cobb Group's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
When a hyperlink is created from text, FrontPage automatically underlines it. However, you can remove the underline--at least in browsers that support Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). To do so, right-click on the link and choose Hyperlink Properties. Click the Style button. In the Style dialog box that appears, click the Text tab. Choose None from the Decoration dropdown list. (This is not the same thing as leaving the Decoration text box blank.) Click OK twice to see the results.
Mike Fetzer
Last week we told you all about the great FrontPage news group that Microsoft provides. Some readers, however, have had trouble accessing the group. So, this week we'll show you how to get signed up.
The easiest way to access the FrontPage news group is to visit the following Web page:
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/resources/default.htm
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the FrontPage For Windows link under the Newsgroups heading. Doing so should launch your default newsreader program--we'll assume that's Outlook Express. Now, choose Subscribe To This Newsgroup from the Tools menu. (Other newsreaders will have slightly different commands.)
If that procedure doesn't work, do the following:
1. Launch Internet Explorer and choose News from the Go menu. This will
launch Outlook Express.
2. Choose Accounts... from the Tools menu.
3. Click the Add button and choose News.... This will launch the Internet
Connection Wizard.
4. Fill in your name and e-mail address as indicated on the first two
wizard pages. On the third page (Internet News Server Name), type
msnews.microsoft.com. On the next page, type Microsoft News Server.
Finally, on the last page, indicate how you connect to the Internet.
5. Now, back in Outlook Express, click the News Groups button on the
toolbar. Type frontpage. Select the news group name you want from the list
below (should be the fourth entry) and click Subscribe.
6. Next, double-click on the FrontPage group's name just below the News
Groups button.
7. Choose Subscribe To This News Group from the Tools menu.
The above procedure is somewhat complicated, but next time you can skip steps 2-5.
At this point, you can read and reply to messages much as you would with e-mail. There are a few of differences, however. First, the messages are "threaded," which simply means the replies to a message (and the replies to the replies) are all tied together in a chain. Click the + sign next to a message to see the whole thread. Second, when you reply to a message, you have to choose whether to reply to the individual who posted the message or to the whole group. Most importantly, you have to "go" to Outlook to read messages, they don't come to your e-mail in-box.
ZD Journal's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
One of the most frustrating things about FrontPage's otherwise nifty "automatic" navigation bar feature is that it won't let you create a button that links to an external URL. A large Web site, for example, must be broken up into a number of child Webs under a master root Web. To assemble the site one needs to create links from the root Web to each child Web and vice versa. FrontPage navigation view can only create links between pages within a single Web.
The workaround is simple. Just create a blank page and place it in the proper spot on the FrontPage Explorer navigation view hierarchy. Name it whatever you want the button to say. Then, open this placeholder page in FrontPage Editor's HTML view and add the following line of code:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.targetURL.com/">
where http://www.targetURL.com is the site you want to link to. This meta tag makes the placeholder page a redirection page with "0" seconds delay before the browser is automatically pointed to http://www.targetURL.com.
FrontPage is happy. It creates a button with whatever text you want, and the Web surfer gets to the proper destination with negligible delay.
Gary Stowell
A standard way of saving form results in FrontPage is to use the default form handler (also called the WebBot Save Results component) to write to a results file in a directory in a FrontPage web. In FrontPage 1.1 and FrontPage 97, writing form results to a directory made the contents of the directory readable to any user who discovered the URL of the results file.
In FrontPage 98, you can assign a virtual directory mapping for a form results directory that has both the execute and the read bits turned off. This prevents any end-user from reading the contents of the directory, but it requires the FrontPage web author to fetch the contents of the directory using the FrontPage Explorer.
To make a directory unreadable, select it in the FrontPage Explorer's Folders view, and then select Properties from the Edit menu. In the Folder Properties dialog box, deselect these two settings: Allow scripts or programs to be run and Allow files to be browsed.
Microsoft Web Builder
If you don't want to use FrontPage's JavaScript-based hover buttons, here's a way to create them using only Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Add the following HTML code between the <head> and </head> tags on your page:
a:link {
background: #9c9;
color: #633;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
text-decoration: none;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: smaller;}
a:active {
background: #633;
color: white;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
text-decoration: none;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: smaller;}
a:visited {
background: #9c9;
color: #633;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
text-decoration: none;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: smaller;}
a:hover (
background: #fc6;
color: #633;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
text-decoration: none;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: smaller;}
You can make your buttons look even better by adding a nonbreaking space-- --before and after the link text:
<a href="whatever.htm"> :Click Here </a>
The code above will give you green buttons that turn gold while the mouse cursor is hovering over them. Of course, you can change the fonts, colors, and the class name to suit your taste.
Older browsers just display a normal link. Some CSS browsers display the button but the color doesn't change. The best part is that there's never a script error, no matter what browser your reader is using, and no matter how they've got their options set.
Ken Collins
You've probably noticed that when you insert VBScript or JavaScript into a Web page, FrontPage ignores your script in Normal mode. Since the script is invisible, it's easy to accidentally delete it.
To prevent this problem, choose Format Marks from the View menu. When you do, the location of your scripts will then be marked with a little flag. JavaScript flags have a "J" on them, while VBScript flags show a miniature version of the Visual Basic logo.
Mario Beaugrand
Last week we told you how to remove the formatting from text before pasting it into FrontPage. Several people responded with other, easier methods. Here are two:
Renato Navajas (renaton@mict.gov.br) and Chris Barker (cbarker@microsoft.com) both recommended using the Paste Special command--instead of the Paste command--on FrontPage Editor's Edit menu. When you do so, the Convert Text dialog box appears. Select either the Normal Paragraphs or Normal Paragraphs With Line Breaks option and click OK.
Chris Maher (chris@1x.com, http://1x.com/advisor/), on the other hand, recommends switching to HTML view, and then choosing Paste from the Edit menu. Doing so will paste your text without formatting. Be aware that this method removes carriage returns, as well, so it may not be appropriate for long selections.
Inside Microsoft FrontPage
If your Web structure gets even moderately large, you'll soon discover that you can't view the whole Web in Navigation view in FrontPage Explorer. Fortunately, there are several ways to navigate the Navigation view:
* Scrollbars appear as needed.
* If you click on an empty area of the Web structure, a grabber hand will appear, which you can use to move the structure around in the window.
* When a page is selected, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move through the Web structure. (And when you reach the page you want, you can press [Enter] to open it in FrontPage Editor.)
Paul Mundy
Last week, we showed you several ways to navigate a Web's structure in FrontPage Explorer's Navigation view. Here's another tip to make navigation easier:
If you right-click on an empty (light blue) area of the Web structure, you'll access a context menu with two useful navigation commands (as well as some other useful commands). Fit In Window shrinks the structure down to fit the window. Rotate turns the structure on its side--the home page will be at the left, and the structure will flow to the right. Depending on how your Web is structured, this option may allow you to easily see all the pages without choosing Fit In Window.
ZD Journal
While FrontPage 98's Navigation Bar functionality is a great help in keeping your site organized, it's limited to working with pages within the subweb you're currently developing. Wouldn't it be great to be able to create a navigation block to jump someplace else--to a different subweb within your intranet or even to an outside site? Well, here is an easy way to create that functionality.
For each external link you want, create a page with the following HTML:
<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=MYLINK"> <title>XXX</title> <meta name="Microsoft Theme" content="none"> <meta name="Microsoft Border" content="none"> </head> <body> <p>Preparing to jump to XXX page...</p> <p>If this page remains on your screen for very long, please click <a href="MYLINK">here...</a></p> </body> </html>
Substitute an appropriate title for "XXX", and the URL for your destination for MYLINK.
The "refresh" meta tag causes an immediate jump to the desired destination, while the extra hyperlink in the body allows the user to go directly to that page if their browser doesn't properly support refresh. The Microsoft Theme and Border meta tags, set to none, prevent FrontPage from putting extraneous borders and formatting on the jump page, keeping the overhead low.
Note that FrontPage 2000 offers external navigation directly--just right-click on a page in Navigation view and choose External Link from the context menu to create a link to any page outside the subweb.
Woodrow Windischman
On sites that use shared borders and have multiple authors, inexperienced users can accidentally change a shared border. This can create significant grief for the webmaster who has to reconstruct the shared border.
A simple way to protect your shared borders is to create the border, then copy it to another file in the _borders directory (e.g. top_include.htm). Next, open the original border file (e.g., top.htm) and delete all its contents. Add an Include Page component to the page, specifying your renamed file (top_include.htm) as the page to be included.
With this configuration, it's harder to edit a border, but if a shared border gets overwritten, the include file will remain intact and the border can be salvaged much easier.
Ken Signorello
Have you ever tried to create a link from one FrontPage document to a bookmarked spot on another page? Doing so is easy--in the Bookmark text box in the Create Hyperlink dialog box, just type the bookmark's name.
To improve on the technique, leave the linked page open in FrontPage Editor. When you do so and then select that page in the Create Hyperlink dialog box, any bookmarks on the linked page will show up on the Bookmark dropdown menu. No more having to re-open a page to find out exactly how to spell the bookmark.
Jesse P. Luna
If you've set up a navigation bar in your top shared border, you can easily replicate that navigation bar in your bottom shared border. Just right-click on the navigation bar and choose Copy from the shortcut menu. Then, right-click in the bottom border and choose Paste.
You might not want to have two identical navigation bars on the same page, of course, but you could set the second bar up to display text buttons instead of icons. To do so, just double-click it and choose Text in the Orientation And Appearance panel.
You can then adjust the font size of these text links, which gives a really nice lower page navigation tool, similar to many professional sites today. This works especially well if you have a long page. And of course both bars stay in sync with any navigation changes you make to the page.
Don York
If you copy a lot of text from other sites or other applications and frequently paste into a FrontPage Editor document, sometimes you'll get a mixture of font styles and size. While you'll often want to preserve these styles, sometimes you'll want to bring in just the unformatted text.
An easy and fast way to do so is to first paste the text into a new Notepad document and then cut and paste it into FrontPage editor.
Rod Howell
When you click the Publish button in FrontPage, the program compares the files in the local copy of your Web with those on the Web server. If a newer version of a file exists locally, FrontPage uploads it to the server.
Sometimes, however, FrontPage seems to not upload pages that are open in the editor. The reason is not that they're open, but that you haven't saved any changes you've made. Before publishing, then, you should always save your changes by choosing Save All from FrontPage Editor's File menu.
If you're using FrontPage 2000, however, you may have noticed that the Save All command is missing, which means you have to manually save all the pages that are open in the editor-a potentially tedious process.
Fortunately, thanks to the integration of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) with FrontPage 2000, you can easily restore the Save All command. For complete details, visit this page on the Microsoft Web site:
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/articles/fpvba.htm
ZD Tips
Learn how to use FrontPage 98 and Microsoft Personal Web Server to set different access levels on your FrontPage-based Web site. Read the article at:
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/resources/letmein.htm
The Cobb Group's Inside Microsoft Office 97 journal
Ever wondered how to get single spaced bulleted list in FrontPage 98? Or perhaps you've managed to do it at times, but just couldn't get it to work at other times?
The solution is easy: Just make sure that the Left Justification button on the FrontPage Editor toolbar is not activated. That should do the trick.
Victor Voo
As every Web designer knows, the size of your image files can significantly increase page download times. One way to reduce download times, of course, is to reduce the size of your images.
But that means more than just resizing the image in FrontPage Editor or FrontPage 2000's Page view. When you drag an image's size handles to make it smaller, you're not actually decreasing the file size. Instead, you're simply reducing the "window" through which the file is viewed. (That's why the estimated download time indicator at the bottom of the FrontPage window doesn't change.)
Once you've resized the image, then, you need to click the Resample button on the Image toolbar (the Pictures toolbar in FrontPage 2000). Doing so will reduce the actual file size to match the image's new proportions. In most cases, it will also significantly improve the image's appearance.
ZD Tips
Our tip last week described how the Resample button can drastically reduce the file size of images in FrontPage. As we noted, however, that technique only works when you've reduced an image's proportions.
If you want to reduce an image's file size--but still have it appear just as large on your page--you'll need to reduce the number of different colors that appear in the file. (You can usually do so without affecting the image's quality.)
Several popular Web site "tune-up" services can help you. All you do is enter your image file's URL, and the site generates versions that are up to 90 percent smaller than the original. You just pick the version you like, save it to disk, and then import it into your Web. For more information, visit www.netmechanic.com (for GIFBot) and websitegarage.netscape.com (for GIF Lube).
If you have Microsoft PhotoDraw, which ships with Office 2000 Premium, you have access to a similar feature through the Save For Use In Wizard. Choose Save For Use In from the File menu, select On The Web, and click Next. PhotoDraw will then generate several GIF and JPEG alternatives for you to choose from.
ZD Tips
FrontPage's hover buttons are easy to create and attractive, as many FrontPage users have discovered. Many users have also discovered, however, that they have trouble attaching sound files to hover buttons.
The reason for this problem is that you can use 8-bit, 8000 Hz, mono, u-law audio (.au) files only, not .wav, .ra, or other files with hover buttons. This Microsoft Knowledge Base article offers more information on using sound files with hover buttons:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q175/1/75.asp
ZD Tips
The Scheduled Image component in FrontPage (called Scheduled Picture in FrontPage 2000) lets you add an image to a page--but only have it appear during a specified period of time. For example, by using the component to add a "new" image next to new items on your links page, you don't have to remember to go back and remove that image after a couple of months.
Many FrontPage users have avoided the Scheduled Image component, however, because it doesn't seem to work. Even after an image's expiration date has passed, the image continues to appear on the page.
The reason for this apparent bug is that FrontPage only updates your scheduled images when you republish your Web--it happens during the "Processing Web Updates" phase of the publishing process. If you plan to use the Scheduled Image component, then, you should make it a habit to hit the Publish button on a regular basis.
(Note: The same thing applies to the Scheduled Include Page component.)
ZD Tips
Recently we shared some ways to remove the formatting from text you paste into FrontPage. Here's one more way:
Simply highlight the text you've pasted in and choose Remove Formatting from the Format menu. Or, from the keyboard, press [Ctrl][Shift]Z or hold down [Ctrl][spacebar].
Dean Rochford and Alexander Peijnenborgh
If you have more than one document open in FrontPage Editor, you can switch between them by clicking the Back and Forward buttons on the toolbar. An even quicker method is to press the left or right arrow key while holding down the [Alt] key.
Finally, if you're an especially hardcore Windows user, type [Alt]W to open the Windows menu. Then, type the number that corresponds with the page you want to view.
Steven Makin
FrontPage 98 makes it easy to create a marquee, an area on the page through which text scrolls: Just choose Insert | Active Elements | Marquee. Unfortunately, however, marquees only work in Internet Explorer. If you open a page that includes a marquee in another browser, the text will appear, but it won't be animated.
To create a cross-browser marquee, check out Cameron Gregory's TickerTape JavaScript at:
http://www.bloke.com/javascript/TickerTape/
ZD Journals' Inside Microsoft FrontPage Journal
Thumbnail graphics are great tools for striking a balance between your pages' visual interest and quick download time. Basically, thumbnails are smaller versions of large graphics that might bog down a typical browser. If you include thumbnails in your main Web pages and make the small images links to full-sized graphics, you can create effective designs that won't overwhelm casual browsers or bore frequent visitors to your site.
To create a thumbnail link, you'll use your image editor to create a smaller version of a main graphic. (Scaling a GIF image to 35 percent can reduce the size of the file to about 20 percent of the original.) Then, simply use the Insert menu's Image... command to place your thumbnail into your main page. Then, use the Create Hyperlink dialog box to link the thumbnail image to another HTML page that contains nothing but your full-size GIF and perhaps a caption.
The Cobb Group
If you have a fast Internet connection, you may be accustomed to editing your Webs live on the fly. Doing so gives you immediate gratification -- your changes appear on the Internet as soon as you hit the Save button.
But so will your mistakes. That's why FrontPage's publish feature may be the better way to go. With that feature, you create your Web locally and then click Publish to upload it to the Internet -- as long as your Web server has the FrontPage server extensions installed.
If you want to create a local version of a live Web, open the live version and use the publish command to "publish" the Web to your local hard drive.
Rob Hutchinson
Have you ever inserted a page banner, only to discover that it appears in the browser without any text? If so, chances are you include quotations marks in the page's title (which is where the Page Banner component gets the text it uses).
To solve the problem, switch to FrontPage Explorer and choose Navigation view. Right-click on the page's icon and choose Rename from the popup menu. Type a new title-one that does not include quotation marks-and press Enter. When you switch back to FrontPage Editor, the page title should now appear on your banner.
If you absolutely must use quotation marks, you can enter curly quotes in the page title. To create an opening quotation mark, hold down the [Alt] key and type 0147 on the numeric keypad. Then, release [Alt]. To create a closing quote, hold down [Alt], type 0148, and release [Alt]. (Your keyboard's Num Lock feature must be turned on.)
The characters will appear as dark vertical lines in the Explorer's Navigation view, but they'll look right on the page banner.
By the way, this problem only affects page banners displayed as images. Banners displayed as text are not affected.
ZD Journal's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
In the HTML 3.2 specification, there was no way for an author to associate text with an intrinsic control such as a radio button or text box. Unlike an <A> tag, which has an accompanying </A> tag and encloses text, the <INPUT> tag does not have an </INPUT> tag. Therefore, screen readers have a difficult time finding exactly what text to use to describe the control to the user. HTML 4.0 introduces the <LABEL> tag, which allows the author to associate text with another HTML element. This is particularly useful for associating text with intrinsic controls. Whenever an intrinsic control is used on a page, a <LABEL> tag containing its associated text should accompany it. Doing so provides an additional benefit: Clicking the label toggles the value of the associated intrinsic control. To associate a <LABEL> tag with a radio button, use the following HTML syntax:
<FORM> <INPUT TYPE=radio ID=FirstButton NAME=radio1> <LABEL FOR=FirstButton>I'm the text for the first radio button</LABEL><BR> <INPUT TYPE=radio ID=SecondButton NAME=radio1> <LABEL FOR=SecondButton>I'm the text for the second radio button</LABEL> </FORM>
Microsoft Web Builder
The Include Page component in FrontPage lets you set up commonly used content (e.g., a footer or a sidebar) just once and then display it on any number of pages in your Web. Unfortunately, any scripts in your included page will tend to generate JavaScript errors in the browser, even though the scripts worked perfectly when the page was displayed on its own.
The reason is that Front Page only includes the portion of the page between the <body> and </body> tags, ignoring everything between the <head> and </head> tags. So, if you put your scripts in the head section of the page--as the gurus tell you to--they'll be ignored, and a script error will result.
Fortunately, the solution is simple: Just move your scripts into the body section of the page.
Ivor Jones
Have you ever selected an image and tried to invoke the AutoThumbnail command, only to find that the command is grayed out? One of two things has happened. Perhaps you've selected more than just a single image. Try reselecting the image by clicking on it, not dragging across it. Another possible reason is that your image is smaller than the thumbnail would be. Go to the Tools menu and choose Options.... Then, reduce the number in the pixels field.
The Cobb Group's Inside Microsoft FrontPage journal
By default, FrontPage uses a relatively small font size in HTML view. If you'd like to increase or decrease the font size -- and you have a Microsoft IntelliMouse or Wheel Mouse -- just hold down the <Ctrl> key and roll the mouse wheel.
This feature lets you view long lines of HTML without horizontal scrolling and lets you zoom in on your code without having to squint.
Morten Therkildsen