www.visiontm.com

What it is

Front Page is a web development tool. It allows you to create HTML pages but also a whole lot more. With Front Page you can manage your site in a graphical format that let's you see all the pages on your site, the hyperlinks used and their relationship to other pages. You can perform whole site spell checking, the creation and use of common pages (such as copyright, logos, menus, etc) insertion of counters, web forms to e-mail and many other functions. A more detailed explanation of it's features can be found HERE.

Where to get it

You can obtain Front Page from many vendors around the country, including the major office supply and computer chains. We have a short list of Internet Mail Order houses that we use in the links section.

Common Uses

Each of the software tools in this section allow you to perform many of the same functions, however, each has it's own advantages and features that no other program has. A few items specific to Front Page are:

Front Page Basics

There are many programs out there that do admirable jobs of creating Web documents (see any shareware location listed on the links page ). Microsoft Front Page can certainly create and edit web page content as well. But the real strengths of Front Page lie in it's ability to create, update and manage Web Sites. What's the difference you might ask? This is what we will discuss in this segment of Web Development. For our discussions, all references to Front Page will be the 97 version, as this has the largest installed base. The 98 version should follow the concepts fairly closely and we will get in to specific 98 topics (like forms to e-mail) in a later issue.

The number one suggestion I would give you concerning Front Page is don't just dive right in and start using it. You will wind up fighting against the program rather than working with it. Take the time to walk through the tutorials, examine the samples, understand what a Web Bot Include is and what Explorer is designed to do.

Front Page Explorer is the starting point to Web Site development and management. For this issue there are only several things I want you to look at in Explorer:

1. The Explorer can show you your web in either hyperlink or folder view. I prefer folder view to do most of the day to day work because of the file copy, move and rename capabilities. Folder View looks very similar to Windows Explorer with folders in the left panel and files in the right panel.
2. The _private folder is used to store all pages you don't want included in the Front Page Search engine. We will be storing our Web Bot include pages (discussed below) in here as well.
3. Use Web Parameters (Tools/Web Settings/Parameters from the menu) to set variables that you can use throughout the Web such as your Contact name. This way if your Contact person changed, you would only have to change the Web Parameter Contact Name value and it would change every page that used it.

The other primary component of Front Page is the editor. This is where the HTML coding takes place by using various WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tools. There are several tools that are the backbone of Front Page editing and several nuances that are the back breaker of newbies.

1. Don't try to hand code your page. Use the tools that are available. If you absolutely need to insert HTML code (such as for banner exchanges) use Insert/HTML Markup from the menu. This will insert code that will be ignored by Front Page's error correcting tools.
2. Create a blank page. Set it's properties for background color, link colors and so on. Save it as style.html and store it in the _private folder. For every page you create in the future, select style.html in the "Get Background colors from" field under the Page Properties/Background menu. Then if you ever want to change the background and colors, you will only have to change them in one place (style.html) and all pages will change.
3. Set up a separate page for each side menu, logo, message, and navigation bar you want to use. Save them each in _private and use them by selecting Insert/WebBot/Include. Whenever you want to change the menu you only need to change the included menu page and all pages using it will change.
4. Set up your own template page that has all the components that each page will include (logo, side menu, navigation bar, etc) and save it in _private as well. When you want to create a new page you can open the template and do a save-as to start your new page with the menu and logo already in the right place.

Front Page Nuances

Now we will take a look at some of the nuances that make Front Page frustrating to use. These nuances can be especially frustrating for those who have some knowledge of HTML coding and try to force Front Page to do what that think it should do. As I indicated last week, it is important that you understand Front Page rather than fight it.

1. The first thing an experienced coder tries to do is insert his/her own HTML code. Typical applications would be for inserting Web Banners and counters. If you try to edit the code by viewing HTML it will overwrite it the next time it starts up. Simply select HTML Markup from the Insert menu and it will bring up a window for you to enter your code. You can easily paste code from banners, etc in to this window. After you press "OK" you will see a small <?> where the HTML code will be inserted. Keep in mind this code will not be checked in any way for accuracy or spelling, but will also not be touched by Front Page’s automatic processes. If you did a "View/HTML" on your page you would see a webbot insert of "HTML markup" in the text.
2. A common question is "How do I run a CGI program from within Front Page?" Typical uses of CGI would be for "E-mail to forms" in Front page 97, running a log analysis program, or any number of other processes. This can be accomplished using a Front Page Form, select Custom CGI Script, select settings, enter the name of the cgi program in the action line and enter POST for the method. Other criteria can be passed to the CGI program by creating hidden fields or using form fields with names that match what the CGI program expects.
3. I’ve covered the use of Meta Tags for listing your pages in the search engines. You enter Meta Tags in each page by selecting "Page Properties" from the file menu and then selecting "Custom". In the user variables you will already see some entries for Front Page. Select "Add" and in the name field type "DESCRIPTION" and in the value enter the description of your page (this is often used as the description next to the hyperlink in a search engine) then select "OK". Next add your keywords by selecting "Add" again, entering "KEYWORDS" in the name field and entering your keywords in the value field with a comma between each word.
4. Past issues covered how tables can make your pages format the way you want them. You will often need to edit the properties of the tables and cells. Simply right click anywhere in the table and select "Table Properties" in order to adjust width, layout, color, etc. To set the cell properties simply select "Cell Properties" after right clicking in the proper cell. One very peculiar nuance of Front Page and it’s table handling, is when you want to add information after a table. There is often no space or carriage return showing after the table that would allow you to type your text. If you select the entire table, cut it, hit enter, then paste your table back above the carriage return you will have the necessary line to start typing.
5. The easiest way to add files to Front Page is from Explorer. Select the directory you want to import the files to. Select "Import" from the "File" menu and you will be given a typical file selection window. Here you can select directories, files and even Web pages off the Internet.
6. If you need to move pages or graphics to a different directory, that’s no problem. You can simply drag and drop them in Explorer and it will change all the Hyperlinks for you. Be sure to close all open Editor files as this has caused problems for me in the past.
7. To be sure your pages are ready for publishing there are two particularly useful tools in Explorer. The first is Spell Checker (on the Tools menu) which will check your entire Web for spelling errors. This is also available on a page by page basis in Editor, but it’s nice to check the entire web to be sure. The second tool is the Verify Hyperlink tool. This tool will verify the validity of every hyperlink on your site and give you the chance to change it if it doesn’t check out. Don’t forget to connect to the Internet before you run the tool.

Front Page 97 verses 98

With all of my concerns about Microsoft (see the editorial), I do think they hit a home run with their Web Development tool Front Page. There are many options and tools to create web pages, but there aren't many as good as Front Page in managing your site and providing built in tools.

1. Built in forms to e-mail. Prior to FP98 if you wanted to have your visitors fill out a form and have the information sent to you via e-mail (a very handy tool) you would have to obtain and install a CGI program such as Formail. For the average user, adapting a CGI program to work on your server is not the easiest thing in the world to tackle. With FP98 that task is built in. The only peculiarity with the process is that neither the Front Page server or the Personal Web server that comes with Front Page has e-mail capability.  In order to set up the form correctly you have to be sure to answer "NO" when the program tells you that your server is not e-mail capable and asks if you want to delete the e-mail recipient. Once you publish your site to the server that does have e-mail capability, the form will work correctly. There is a minor modification that your Web Presence Provider has to add to enable Front Page e-mail capability, so ensure your form works correctly by testing it after you go live.

2. Semi-Automatic Thumbnail creation. If you have spent any time at all developing a web site you soon realize that preparing graphics for your site can be very time consuming.  FP98 has a nice little tool that lets you create a thumbnail of your picture right from within your page. This eliminates creating multiple sizes of your images in your paint program in order to place them in your site. A thumbnail is a small picture that will load quickly and when clicked on will take you to the larger image. Great for speeding up your site or presenting many samples of pictures quickly. To create the thumbnail simply click on an image and select Tools/Auto Thumbnail.

There are many other interesting tools and features in both Front Page versions. Be careful that you don't fall for the Microsoft trap of using Database integration and Active Server Pages (ASP) that only exist with WindowsNT. For the time being, and hopefully for some time to come, UNIX based servers still dominate the Internet market.