Frontpage 2000

ACTIVEX AT YOUR SERVICE

Microsoft's ActiveX uses Microsoft programming tools already familiar to many programmers, such as Visual Basic (for software authoring) and OLE (for interapplication compatibility), to build doodads that then can appear in Web browser windows (specifically, in Internet Explorer windows). ActiveX is used to create many fine games and fancy animation effects, and it's also a gateway into real online collaboration. Using ActiveX, you can make Microsoft Word and Excel documents accessible to an Internet or intranet community so that people can change the content of an online document in real time. A lot of what can be done in Shockwave can also be accomplished in ActiveX: multimedia presentations, Web site navigation, interfacing a database, and so on.

EYE ON ADD-INS

Add-ins, a new feature that first appeared in FrontPage 2000, are programs, typically supplied by third-party developers, that extend the capabilities of FrontPage. You can also write your own custom add-ins, using Visual Basic or Visual C++.

Most users will encounter add-ins only when installing and using a commercially developed add-in. To add a new add-in to FrontPage, select Tools, Add-ins. Click the Add button and locate the Add-in executable. To remove an add-in from the list, select the add-in in the Add-ins dialog box and click the Remove button.

OFFLINE ADVERTISING

Just because your Web site is online doesn't mean your publicity efforts have to be restricted to cyberspace. Some obvious choices for meat-space (real-world) publicity include adding your domain name to your business cards, letterhead, and resume. Some folks get really creative with their site publicity, slapping their domain names on everything from t-shirts to cars!

FRONTPAGE AUTOFIT TO CONTENTS COMMAND

When you work on a data table within a Web page, you might want to make the table smaller or larger than FrontPage's default table size to better accommodate the page contents. For example, if you type prices or one-word descriptions in a table cell, the content takes up only a small amount of cell space in a default table. Although you can adjust column widths and row heights manually by dragging the row and column borders, this maneuver takes considerable time and effort. A far easier approach involves the AutoFit to Contents command to reduce or expand the table to fit the contents.

When you use the AutoFit to Contents command, the table borders appear very close to the table content. You may want to adjust the table by dragging the borders or by changing the cell padding. Cell padding is space you add around the interior of a frame.

ALWAYS CLICK OK IN FRONTPAGE2000

When attempting to Check Server Extensions or performing a Recalculate Web command in the Microsoft Management Console, you may encounter an error message similar to the following: "Dr. Watson for Windows NT. An application has occurred and an application error log is being generated. mmc.exe Exception: access violation (0xc0000005), Address: 0x67f26153." According to Microsoft, this error may occur if you don't click OK at the end of each task. The solution is simply to click OK every time you're prompted.

EXPERIENCING COMPUTER AMNESIA?

If your computer says it's out of memory, it just means that a part of the machine is filled to capacity. Memory -- known in computer dweeb circles as RAM (random-access memory, pronounced ram, like the goat) -- enables your computer to run programs. Photoshop needs lots of RAM -- version 6 requires a minimum of 96MB and prefers to have even more. If you can't launch Photoshop because of a memory error, you have three options:

Free up RAM by quitting all other programs that are currently running.
Restart your computer by choosing the Shut Down command from the Windows Start menu and then choosing the Restart the Computer option. After your computer restarts, try to launch Photoshop again. (On a Mac, restart the computer by choosing Special, Restart at the Finder and try to launch Photoshop after the Finder reappears.)
Buy and install more RAM.

If you've never tried to upgrade the RAM in your machine, seek out expert advice from your local computer guru.

SOUNDING OFF ABOUT AUDIO EFFECTS

Before you can create a link to a sound on your Web page, you need to place a copy of the sound file in the same folder that stores all the Web pages for your Web site. This ensures the sound file will transfer with your Web site when you publish your Web pages. If you do not copy the sound file, people will not be able to play the sound. Each Web site you create has its own folder in the My Webs folder. The My Webs folder is stored in the My Documents folder on your C: drive.

BACKGROUND CHECK

If you want to use a background image on your Web page, pick a design that enhances, rather than overwhelms, your page's overall appearance and message. A good background image should have invisible edges; when the image repeats to fill the page, you should not be able to tell where the edges of the images meet. Make sure the background image you choose does not affect the readability your Web page. You may need to change the color of text to make the Web page easier to read.

SET A BACKGROUND COLOR FOR A PAGE

Why settle for a plain white background when it's simple to set a background color?

In Page View, right-click the page and click Page Properties on the shortcut menu. Select the Background tab. Select a color in the Background box, and click OK. Go on, get crazy with the personalization of your Web site. Your viewers will thank you for it later.

BACKING UP TO BACKGROUND

If you want to add a background image to your Web page, it's certainly easy enough to do. Just follow these steps:

Begin by selecting File, Properties. In the Page Properties dialog box, click the Background tab. (NOTE: If you don't have a Background tab, it's because you've already applied a theme to your Web site. You can't change the background this way if your site has a theme.) Now, under Formatting, click Background Picture. Click the Browse button to find the image on your hard drive. Once you've found the image you want, click OK. The image should appear, as a repeating pattern, in the background of your page. Keep one important thing in mind when you use this technique: Background images need to be subtle. If they're too bold or loud, people won't be able to see the page for all the busy-ness in the background. To avoid this problem, check out the clip art that comes with FrontPage: It has a whole section of background art.

Enjoy!

BACKGROUND CHECK

If you're trying to be designedly correct (DC), you should employ gradations in your page backgrounds that stay within the same range of contrast and color saturation. Going from dark blue to dark green, for example, creates a uniformly dark background, upon which you can place light-colored text for the appropriate high contrast. Conversely, gradating from light brown to light orange or yellow creates a light enough background so that you can use traditional black text without running into a background/foreground contrast problem.

BACK TO BASICS

It's simple enough: You've got to do your homework. And in this case, that might mean doing the tutorial. Remember that box that your copy of FrontPage 2000 came in? Well, it included a book called "Getting Started with FrontPage 2000." And in that book you'll find a step-by-step tutorial on how to build a Web page. If you're just getting started and you're a little Web design-impaired, this is a pretty good place to start (these tips aside, of course).

AUTOMATIC BACKGROUND SCROLLING

A scrolling background certainly draws attention, which can be good and bad. One possible positive application of this technique is to use a small company logo as your background image, so that your logo is constantly scrolling down the browser window. (It's not-quite-subliminal advertising.)

Another possible application is to embed a text message in the background graphic. If you don't add any text to the foreground of the page, you've created a movie credits-type effect using nothing but a background image.

USING FRAMES FOR BANNER ADS

A common application of frames is to have a separate frame on your site dedicated to banner advertisements. You may encounter this if you visit personal sites hosted on ISP member servers or networks composed of many independently run sites.

To create a separate frame for a banner ad, define a two-row frameset as you normally would. For the source of the banner frame, indicate the URL of the HTML document containing the banner ad.

When you code banner ads directly into regular HTML pages, you have the ability to serve a new banner ad each time the visitor loads a new page. Five page views on your site can yield five banner impressions, for example. However, when you place a banner ad within an independent frame, the banner rotation is independent of the content page views because the frame containing the banner does not reload each time the user visits a new page. To control banner impressions, you can use a <meta> tag with a refresh attribute or create a script that rotates ads at specific intervals.

BRANDISHING YOUR BANNER

Just as your company letterhead has a logo and address at the top, many Web sites also have a graphical banner located at the top of each page. Usually, this banner is placed only on the subpages (Web design lingo for every page except the home page). The home page usually gets a similar, yet special, design treatment. Such a banner does three useful things for your Web site:

Consistency. A banner placed consistently at the top of each page can be just the thing to visually differentiate your site from all the rest.
Branding. A banner is a great opportunity to visually express your company's brand -- the catch-all term for your company's colors, attitude, style, and message.
Navigation. To help users get around your Web site, a banner can provide a consistent set of links to the main sections -- or at least to the home page.

CREATE A BOOKMARK

You wouldn't read a whole cookbook to find one recipe, would you? Of course not--you'd look for the recipe you want, then go directly to it. Similarly, if someone looking at your Web page wants to jump to a particular point in a page, you should make it easy for him/her to do so. By creating a bookmark (anchor link for you tech-types out there), you can allow your visitors to jump to the relevant part of the page, rather than the top.

Let say you've got a page that details every member of your family. To allow visitors to jump right to Uncle Fred's entry, you need to create a bookmark.

In Page View, position the insertion point where you want to create a bookmark, or select the relevant text. Click Insert, Bookmark. Type the name of the bookmark in the Bookmark Name box--let's call this one Fred. Click OK.

MARK IT WITH A "B" FOR BOOKMARK

Bookmarks are handy inventions--just a thin piece of paper, slipped casually into a book, helps you find the place you left off and saves you a lot of time.

FrontPage uses the word "bookmark" to mean something slightly different, though just as useful. A bookmark in FrontPage lets you find a location in the middle of a Web page. These kinds of bookmarks are handy for a few different things: they're good as links so visitors to your site aren't always dropped off at the top of a given page. They're also a handy way for you to navigate around a page. Much like a paper bookmark, they help to mark a place so it's easier for you to find when you go back to revisit a location on your site. Over the next few days, we'll learn how to do a few different tricks with bookmarks.

MAKING QUICK WORK OF OUTDATED BOOKMARKS

Get rid of any bookmarks that outlive their usefulness. The procedure is quick and painless (for both you and the bookmark). If the bookmark is made up of text, right-click inside the bookmark you want to dismantle, and from the pop-up menu that appears, choose Bookmark Properties. In the Bookmark dialog box that appears, click Clear. If the bookmark is marked with a flag icon, place the cursor in front of the flag icon and then press the Delete key.

CHANGING SHARED BORDER FORMATTING

Compared to earlier versions, FrontPage 2002 makes it easy to modify the background color or image of shared borders. To assign a new color to a shared border, just right-click in any shared border on a page, and choose Border Properties from the context menu. In the Border Properties dialog box, use the Border drop-down menu to pick which border you want to format (if there is more than one border on the page).

Once you select a border, you can use the Color checkbox and drop-down menu to choose a background color, or the Picture checkbox and the Browse button to place an image behind a shared border.

BORDERS--PART 1 OF 3

If you've got a logo or a family crest that you want to display on your Web pages, why not set it off from the rest of the page with a border? Depending on where you put it, it can serve as part of the page's title, the navigation bar, or just a way to put your personal touch on your work. In our next tip, we'll show you how to add the same border to the rest of the pages in your web.

In Page View, select Format, Shared Borders. Click Current Page. Specify where you want the border (or borders) to appear. For a title or navigation bar, you'll probably want to choose Top. Click OK.

Now your page has a border at the top. In the next tip, you'll learn how to create a consistent look for your Web site by sharing a border between pages.

BORDERS--PART 2 OF 3

In the previous tip, you learned how to set up a border for one page. But the nifty thing about shared borders is that you can choose one consistent look for your entire web by creating one border that will appear on every page.

In Page View, select Format, Shared Borders. Click All Pages. Specify where you want the border (or borders) to appear.

In the next tip, you'll learn how to add, change, or remove elements in your shared border. Exciting stuff, huh?

BORDERS--PART 3 OF 3

In the last two tips, you've learned how to create a shared border. Today, you'll learn how to add elements to your border, or change what's already there. For example, you can add a page banner, logo, text, or navigation bar.

Open a page that uses the shared border. In Page View, click inside the border. The dashed line outlining the border will change to a solid line. Make the changes you want. For example, you can change the text (or whatever object you want to add/edit) in the border by clicking on it and typing (or inserting) what you want.

Click Save. Your changes will appear on all the pages that share the border.

RUBBING ELBOWS, OR SHARED BORDERS--PART 1 OF 5

Shared borders. No, we're not talking about some geographical line, separating Country A from Country B. In FrontPage, shared borders refer to common areas that are on the different pages of your web. For example, you can have a shared border across the top of the page, where you can provide navigational links. Or a shared border down the right-hand side of a page can have a certain design. Options abound, my friends.

How do you add a shared border to your Web site? Begin by choosing Format, Shared Borders. In the Shared Borders dialog box, specify that you want the borders to apply to all pages of your site. Now choose the type of borders you want--right, left, top, bottom. (Note that you can add navigation buttons on top and left borders.) When you've finished making your selections, click OK, and FrontPage applies the borders. Now you'll just have to hire some folks for border patrol--just kidding.

RUBBING ELBOWS, OR SHARED BORDERS--PART 2 OF 5

In our previous tip, you learned how to add shared borders to all the pages of your Web site. But what if you want to add those shared borders to only one or two pages?

First, go to the Folders view of your Web page. While you're there, highlight the pages where you want to apply the borders. (Note: If you want to select pages that aren't next to each other, hold down the Control key on your keyboard.) Once you've highlighted your pages, select Format, Shared Borders. In the Shared Borders dialog box, click Selected Page(s). Now choose the borders you want to apply and click OK. The shared borders will be applied to the pages you selected.

RUBBING ELBOWS, OR SHARED BORDERS--PART 3 OF 5

What to put in a bottom border? This is the perfect spot to stash stuff like copyright and trademark information or to put contact information so people know how to reach you.

RUBBING ELBOWS, OR SHARED BORDERS--PART 4 OF 5

Top and bottom borders spread across the entire width of your Web page and should be wide enough to accommodate all the information you have in them. Left and right borders are the same, except, of course, that they stretch from the top to the bottom of the page. But there's a little trick with those side borders: width. After all, you don't want your left border to be so wide that visitors have to scroll to the right to be able to see your Web page in its entirety. To preempt this problem, make sure that the content of your left or right border isn't too wide. Make adjustments so you can see everything on your screen. Then, to be sure it isn't a problem for anyone else, preview the page in different browsers with different screen sizes.

RUBBING ELBOWS, OR SHARED BORDERS--PART 5 OF 5

In our previous tip, we talked about previewing your page using different screen sizes, to be sure that all your visitors will be able to see it properly. Don't worry, that doesn't mean you have to go out and buy a whole bunch of different monitors. Instead, you just have to change a few settings as you preview your page.

Begin by choosing File, Preview In Browser. In the Preview In Browser dialog box, you'll see a section called Window Size. Here, you can select different screen sizes--640x480, 800x600, 1024x768. You should preview your page in all these different options.

Good luck!

ADD BORDERS AROUND TEXT

A border is a great way to set an important paragraph off from the rest of the page, and FrontPage makes it easy to add a border and play with the style, color, and width.

In Page view, select the paragraph around which you want to add a border. Or click anywhere in the paragraph--the border will still be applied to the entire paragraph. Select Format, Borders And Shading. For a four-sided border, click Box (under Setting). Then, you can set the properties by clicking options from Style, Color, and Width.

GIVE ME A BREAK!

Whenever you press the Enter key, FrontPage thinks you want to create a new paragraph and puts a little bit of space between the two paragraphs. If you simply want to create a new line without any space between the new line and the line above it, use a line break instead. To create a line break, press Shift+Enter. To distinguish between line breaks and new paragraphs in your page, click the Show/Hide Paragraph button (the one that looks like a backwards capital P) in the Standard toolbar. Line breaks are flagged with left-pointing arrows.

BROWSER/SERVER COMPATIBILITY IS KEY

Using FrontPage, you can choose a Web browser platform for which you want to optimize your site, and you can also pick and choose among browser-specific design effects. You need to think about this now -- before you embark on site-building -- because, based on your choices, FrontPage makes decisions about how it carries out text formatting and other design tasks. Furthermore, FrontPage makes available in its menus and toolbars only those effects that will work in your chosen platform.

You can also specify the type of host Web server on which you'll eventually publish your site. This feature is most helpful if you intend to publish your site on a Web server that doesn't support FrontPage Server Extensions, because it automatically disables effects that require FrontPage Server Extensions to work.

DESCRIPTIVE BROWSING

Out on the Internet, there are lots of signposts to help you figure out where you are. Obviously, there's the address of the site you're visiting. But, just as important, there's the page title--that's the title of the page that you'll see at the very top of your browser. When you create a page, it's important that you give it a solid, descriptive title. Keep in mind that this isn't only important to help orient your viewers and help them figure out where they are; it's also important for search engines. A lot of search engines use your page title to help them determine the content of your page.

To change the title of your page, just follow these steps: First, select File, Save As. In the Save As dialog box, look for the line called Page Title. Click the Change button to the right of Page Title. Now, a Set Page Title dialog box will appear. You can change the page title here. Be sure to make it something descriptive, but keep it fairly short. When you're done, click OK, then click Save to exit all the dialog boxes.

Note that you won't see the title of your page until you preview the page in your browser.

BUDGET WISE

The cost of running your site day-to-day after its launch is easy to overlook. Don't forget that you must keep content fresh, maintain servers and databases, and generally keep things humming. Depending on the size of your site and your plans for updating content, ongoing support may consist of a room full of content producers, designers, developers, and others forging ideas into Web pages that are dynamically generated through the use of scripts. Also, a few full-time people working away on developing zippy new content, coding it, and posting it; or a single person spending a few hours a week reviewing your server's log files. Whatever the size of your site and your ambitions for it, you'll need to provide appropriate ongoing support. Remember to account for that in your budget.

JAZZING UP YOUR BULLETS--PART 1 OF 2

Your bulleted list has round bullet points, but you prefer the square kind. Here's how to make a change:

Begin by choosing Format, Bullets And Numbering. In the List Properties dialog box, click the Plain Bullets tab. Here you'll see several different options, ranging from a bulleted list without bullets (huh?) to round bullets to square bullets. Click on the picture of the kind of bullet points you'd prefer and then click OK. The bullets will change on the list you've just been working on but won't change for other lists. You'll have to change the bullet points on those lists separately.

JAZZING UP YOUR BULLETS--PART 2 OF 2

If you're using a theme on your Web page, you'll often notice that the bullets are actually little images--much cooler than the standard round or square bullet point. But if you're not using a theme, can you ever hope for such interesting-looking bullets? Absolutely.

First, choose Format, Bullets And Numbering. In the List Properties dialog box, click the Picture Bullets tab. Next, select the Specify Picture option. Click the Browse button to find an image on your hard drive that will work as a bullet. Keep in mind that you'll need to use images that are small enough to be appropriate for a bullet point--you won't be able to resize these images once they've been inserted on your page. One good place to find appropriate images is in the FrontPage clip art collection. There's a section called Buttons & Icons. These images are all the perfect size for use as bullet points. Once you've found the perfect image, click the OK button to insert your new bullet points.

BUTTON DOWN THE INTENT

As idiot-proof as you think your icon or illustration may be, you can never rely on pictures alone to tell users what a button does. Unless you're designing a print function or other common computer task, adding a simple text label to a button or icon is a good idea. After all, no picture could infallibly represent the product catalog section of a site.

By the time you illustrate an icon detailed enough to give users a good idea of what the section is, you have a picture worth framing. You may as well save some space and add a simple text label. Don't rule icons out entirely; they can add a lot of design flavor to a site. Just be sure to supplement them with a label for clarity's sake.

CELL BY CELL

You might decide that different cells of your table should look different--maybe one needs a different background color or different alignment. It's easy enough to customize separate cells. Simply select the cell (or cells) you want to change and right-click. Select Cell Properties from the context menu and make your changes in the Cell Properties dialog box. That's all there is to it.

CHOOSE IT ALL

If you want to apply an effect--like a font style change or color--to a whole page, you have to select the whole page first, right? But rather than scrolling over the entire page to select it, press Ctrl-A on your keyboard. That will select the page in a jiffy.

CLEANING UP CLUTTER ON YOUR SITE

The line between losing and winning is very fine if you're considering using Web "gadgetry." Without it, most sites seem a bit on the dull side, and Web designers exhibit a very strong keep-up-with-the-Joneses streak that usually results in a frenzy of site changes whenever some new technique becomes popular. Too much of a good thing (or too many good things in one place) can, however, become a real problem.

The key is to remember the purpose of your site as you design any page. If anything you're considering adding to the page doesn't serve that purpose, then don't add it. If you discover some fun or glitzy gizmo that you simply must put on a page, first determine if you can make it fit in with what you already have on that page. If you absolutely can't fit it in, but you still want to add it, maybe you can take something else out to make room for it.

This doesn't mean that you can't have more than one unusual feature on a page -- just make sure that you follow a path of moderation.

COLLECTING (CLIP) ART

The vast majority of computer graphics programs include a variety of clip art as a part of their basic packages. Sometimes, this amounts to tens of thousands of professionally drawn illustrations or stock photographs that you can include in your Web page designs. Even if you don't do any of your own graphic development and don't own a professional graphics program, several CD-ROM clip art collections should be available at any good computer or office supply store.

CLOSING IT DOWN

Say you have a few different pages open and you want to close down just one of them. First, open the Window menu and select the page that you want to close. Then, look in the upper-right corner of THAT window. Nope, not the corner of the whole screen--just of that particular page. You'll see a little X. Click the X once, and that page will close.

CODING IN HTML VIEW

Although most of the attention in FrontPage 2000 is paid to the Normal View, the HTML View is where the raw HTML coding takes place. Changes made to the Web page are ultimately made in the HTML View. In fact, you don't need to use the Normal View at all. If you want, you can go right to the HTML View and code HTML just as if you were using any other HTML editor.

CONSIDERING CONTEXT ON YOUR SITE

Context is the atmosphere or environment in which you understand or experience something. It's the total picture that informs each piece of the picture. When it comes to your Web site, the context that you create through various choices you make regarding navigation, text, and other factors will affect the message you deliver and how effectively it will be understood by your audience. Consider how out of place hip-hop slang would seem on a Web site that has a conservative look (or vice-versa), and you'll get the picture about context.

On any Web site, creating context for experience includes issues of usability. It includes how the navigation, look and feel, download times, text, art, transaction system, community interaction, and other components of the site hang together and affect each other. The most skilled content strategists and developers consider both how content affects the context and how context affects the content. For that reason, it is sometimes said that if content is king, usability is queen. And that, friends, means that content people think deeply about usability. Usability people think about content, too.

KEEPING COPIES CLOSE AT HAND

Although you can use FrontPage to create, manage, or make changes to a Web site that's on a remote server, it's best to keep a local copy and make any alterations on it, and then upload (or "publish") the Web pages and other files to the remote Web server when you're done. This gives you an extra layer of protection -- if something should happen to the files on the Web server, you'll still have your own up-to-date copy at hand.

Most of the music created in the last several decades is still under copyright. You're not likely to have any problem using something written by Beethoven or Bach on your site, since they're both long dead and their music has been in the public domain longer than any of us have been alive. If you want to add something from the Spice Girls, on the other hand, you're looking for trouble. Although you'll have no difficulty finding thousands of sites that use copyrighted musical works without permission, if you do the same and one of the law firms representing the artist or one of the music industry groups that are concerned with collecting royalties decides to make an example of you, you'd better have a good lawyer and a healthy bank account.

COUNTING UP PASSERSBY

A hit counter is an odometer-like row of numbers that sits in your page and records the number of visits or hits that the page receives. Each time someone visits the page, the number in the hit counter goes up by one. Hit counters let you brag to visitors about your site's popularity (plus, it's fun to watch the numbers increase every day). To use a FrontPage hit counter, you must establish your Web site on a host Web server that has FrontPage Server Extensions installed.

THINK BEFORE YOU CREATE

A surprising number of people just jump in and start throwing around text and HTML tags with no clue about where they're going or what they want to accomplish on their sites. That approach is fine if you just want to play around -- in fact, that method to your madness can be a lot of fun. But if you want to make a good impression on the Web, sitting down and thinking about a few things ahead of time really pays off. Sketch your ideas on paper. Then describe them to someone else and ask for feedback. This prep work forces you to consider things that you may not think about otherwise: page layout, graphic design, relationship between pages, target audience, content structure, link grouping, and other issues that, when properly integrated, can make your site a first-class surfing experience.

GOTTA KEEP CURRENT

The Web is supposed to help you know things faster and get information more easily. But if the last time someone updated a given Web page was way back in December 1998, then the info you're getting probably won't enlighten you much.

How do you let visitors to your site know that the information they're reading is current? Well, if you add a date and time stamp--which lists the date when the page was last updated--then viewers will know whether your site is up to date. And of course, having that date posted might just motivate you to stay current.

Position your cursor where you want the date stamp to appear on your page. One good place for this might be in a bottom border. Choose Insert, Date And Time. In the Date And Time Properties dialog box, you can specify whether you want to display the date that the page was last edited or the date the page was last automatically updated. You can also choose a format style for the date and time. When you've finished making your selections, click OK. The date stamp will appear on your page.

MAKING THE CUT

To remove a link as well as the text or image for the link in Front Page 2000, select the text or click the image and them press the Delete key. You may want to remove a link that takes readers to a Web page that no longer contains relevant information. Many companies and individuals regularly make changes to their Web pages, so you should check your links often and remove links that are no longer useful.

WANNA MAKE A DATE--PART 1 OF 3

Microsoft FrontPage includes ActiveX controls. These nifty items let you add certain kinds of features to your Web page, like stock tickers or pop-up windows. But one of the coolest features is an interactive calendar. Using this calendar, visitors can change the month and year and choose different dates. To add this calendar to your page, choose Insert, Advanced, ActiveX Control. In the Insert ActiveX Control dialog box, highlight Calendar Control. Now click OK. You'll see the calendar appear on your Web page.

WANNA MAKE A DATE--PART 2 OF 3

Last time you learned how to add an interactive calendar to your Web page, but when you tried to interact with it, you found that it didn't do anything at all. Did you make a mistake? Is there a bug? Neither. You just need to look at it a little differently: Click on the Preview tab that's on the bottom left-hand side of your screen. Now you'll be able to navigate that calendar with ease. Just don't forget that when you're ready to start editing your page again, you'll need to click on the Normal tab at the bottom of the screen.

WANNA MAKE A DATE--PART 3 OF 3

You're interacting with that interactive calendar, but you want it to be a little more exciting, not just the boring gray dates you see before your eyes. You want to be an artiste; you want color.

No problem: Simply right-click on the calendar and then choose ActiveX Control Properties from the context menu. In the resulting dialog box, click the Color tab. On the left-hand side of the dialog box, you'll now see a list with names like BackColor and DayFontColor. On the right, you'll see a series of different colors. Here's how it works: First pick the part of the calendar that you want to change. For example, if you want the background color to be different, highlight BackColor. Now, choose the color you'd prefer on the right. Click the Apply button to see if you like the change. When your artistic side is satisfied, click OK to finish the job.

INCREASE OR DECREASE SPACE BETWEEN CHARACTERS

Have you ever really liked a particular font, but it seemed like the letters were either too squished together or spaced too far apart? Don't worry, you don't have to go searching for a new font--just increase or decrease the space between characters to condense or expand the text.

In Page View, select the text, right-click, and then click Font on the shortcut menu. Click the Character Spacing tab. In the Spacing box, click Expanded or Condensed, and select an option to specify how you want to space the text in the By box.

Now those fonts should look great!

DEFINE THIS--PART 1 OF 2

You may not be creating a dictionary on your Web page, but sometimes you still have to define a term or two. Fortunately, FrontPage has a feature that lets you create a "definition list"--it's basically a formatting trick that makes it clear that you're defining a term. To add this feature to your page, first position your cursor where you want the definition to begin. Now, look at the toolbars at the top of your FrontPage screen. On the far-left side of the Format toolbar, you'll see a white box with an arrow next to it. In the white box, it says "Normal." Click on the arrow next to the word Normal and scroll down until you see the phrase "Defined Term." Select that phrase; it should now appear in the box on your toolbar. Start typing. First, type the term you want to define. Then press the Enter key on your keyboard. Now type the definition for your term. You'll notice that the indentation is different for the term versus the definition. That's how a definition list looks.

DEFINE THIS--PART 2 OF 2

In our previous tip, you learned how to create a definition list. Now, here are a few tricks for making this tool more user friendly--if you want to enter more than one definition for a term, press Shift and Enter at the same time. That will simply insert a line break instead of setting you up for another definition. When you've finished adding terms and definitions, press the Control and Enter keys at the same time--or just press the Enter key twice--and you'll return to Normal formatting.

Enjoy!

DESIGN AWAY

Here's a little design tip: Select the first letter of the first word of your Web page and make it a font size or two larger than the rest of the lettering. This will add some attraction, without cluttering your page.

ANOTHER DESIGN TIP

Here's another thought on design: Don't use more than three different fonts on your Web page. It makes everything too busy for readers to really absorb.

DESIGNING IN STYLE--PART 1 OF 5

No, we're not talking Vogue fashion. We're talking about the elusive style sheets--sometimes known as cascading style sheets. What are they? Style sheets can be a little tough to understand. Basically, you use style sheets to specify design parameters for your Web page. "But I can do that already," you say. True enough--to a degree. After all, you can change font style and size or set background color. But with style sheets, you can do more detailed tricks, like changing character spacing (that is, the space between letters) or set shading properties for boxes--and you can apply these effects and change them with a few clicks of the mouse. Over the next few days, you'll learn some of the basics of style sheets.

DESIGNING IN STYLE--PART 2 OF 5

Style sheets can be pretty complicated. In fact, high-end Web designers use them to drill down into the details of Web design. Fortunately for the less design-savvy among us, FrontPage has some built-in, pre-designed style sheets you can use if you want to apply a style to multiple pages of your Web site. These are called external style sheets. Best of all, they're really easy to use.

Choose File, New, Page. In the dialog box that appears, click the Style Sheets tab. As you highlight the different options, read the description of the styles on the right-hand side of the dialog box. When you find one you like the sound of, click OK. Suddenly, instead of looking at the familiar comfort of the Web page you were just designing, you're staring at a bunch of unfamiliar code. Don't panic--that code is the guts of the style sheet you chose. You might also see a small Style dialog box. For now, let's assume you don't want to make any changes to the preformatted style sheet. (You'll learn how to do that in a future tip.) Choose File, Save As. Give your new style sheet a name and click OK.

Tune in next time for more steps on applying this new style to your Web.

DESIGNING IN STYLE--PART 3 OF 5

Last time, you learned how to choose a style sheet from FrontPage's options, but--you noted, sadly--nothing seemed to change. Right--that's because even though you created a style sheet, you haven't yet linked your Web pages to it. Here's how to finish the job:

First, choose Format, Style Sheet Links. In the Link Style Sheet dialog box that appears, you'll see two radio buttons: Click All Pages to apply the style to your entire web. (You'll learn how to apply it to selected pages another day.) Now, you'll notice that the box under URL is blank. You'll need to add your style sheet so FrontPage knows what style to apply. Start by clicking the Add button to the right of the dialog box. Find the name of your style sheet in the Select Hyperlink dialog box. Here's a tip in case you're having trouble finding it: All style sheets have a .css extension. Once you've found the right style sheet, select it and click OK.

You're now back in the Link Style Sheet dialog box and the name of your style sheet should appear in the white box. If everything looks hunky-dory, click OK. You'll see your new style on your web.

DESIGNING IN STYLE--PART 4 OF 5

You've now learned how to apply a style to your entire web, but what if you want it to apply to a few select pages only? Easy!

First, choose the Folders view. Now, highlight the pages to which you want the new style to apply. If you want to select several pages, hold down the Shift key (for consecutive pages) or the Ctrl key (for pages that aren't next to each other). Choose Format, Style Sheet Links. In the Link Style Sheet dialog box that appears, you'll see two radio buttons: This time, click Selected Page(s). The style sheet will be applied only to the pages you chose when you were back in the Folders view.

Next, you'll need to add your style sheet so FrontPage knows what style to apply. Start by clicking the Add button to the right of the dialog box. Find the name of your style sheet in the Select Hyperlink dialog box. Here's a tip in case you're having trouble finding it: All style sheets have a .css extension. Once you've found the right style sheet, select it and click OK. You're now back in the Link Style Sheet dialog box and the name of your style sheet should appear in the white box. If everything looks hunky-dory, click OK. You'll see your new style applied to the specific web pages you selected.

DESIGNING IN STYLE--PART 5 OF 5

You've applied a FrontPage style, but you've decided you'd like to make a few tweaks. Nothing daunted, you open the style page (choose File, Open and then find the page), but then you gasp. All that code! Don't panic. Style pages may seem impenetrable if you're just reading through them, but FrontPage has a few tricks up its sleeve to help you through the process.

With your style sheet open, choose Format, Style. The Style dialog box will appear on the screen. Using this box, you'll make changes to your style sheet. First, look on the left side of the dialog box at the Styles list. This might look a little cryptic, but it's important. These are the different parts of the style sheet you'll be editing.

For example, see the word "body"? If you select that, you'll be editing the body text style of your style sheet. Look for "a: link"--that has to do with the style of hyperlink text; "a: visited" is the hyperlink text once it's already been visited; and so on. Select the part of your style sheet you'd like to edit and then click the Modify button.

Now you're in the Modify Style dialog box. Click the Format button, and a whole list will appear. Do you want to edit the font? Select that. The paragraph style? (That would have to do with indentation, spacing, and so forth.) Pick it. You get the idea. If you're not sure what something means, don't hesitate to experiment. You can always cancel out of these dialog boxes so your changes don't take hold. Once you're in the Font or Paragraph (or whatever) dialog box, make the changes you'd like. When you're done, click OK to return to the Modify Style dialog box. Now click OK to get back to the Style dialog box. Finally (assuming you've done your tinkering), click OK. You should see the changes you made take effect on your web.

ACCESSIBLE DESIGNS

As you design your site, keep in mind that viewers come to your pages with a variety of computers, operating systems, and monitors. Ensure that your site is accessible to all your potential viewers by testing your pages on a variety of systems. If you want to attract a large audience to your site, you need to ensure that it looks good on a broad range of systems. A design that looks great in Navigator 4.0 and higher may be unreadable in Internet Explorer 3.0. And many people still use old browsers because they haven't bothered -- or don't know how -- to download new versions.

ALERT DIALOG BOX

Alert boxes are often used to inform users that they've done something wrong. You can also cause an alert box to load when the page loads to give users a welcome greeting or instructions; they have to read the message in the box and click OK before the page will fully load.

The confirm alert dialog box is more useful in that it actually gives users a choice. They can click OK to proceed or initiate something happening, or they can click Cancel to go back to what they were doing. As an example, you can use a confirm alert box to warn users that a particular link leads to adult material; they can click OK to continue to the naughty new page, or click Cancel to opt out.

ONLINE DIGITAL DEALS

Dozens of online retailers would like you to buy your digital camcorder on their Web site rather than at your local electronics store. They entice you with incredibly low camera prices, but are these deals too good to be true? When evaluating a purchase, make sure that you check the many "hidden" costs associated with the camera. Does the online retailer charge an exorbitant shipping and handling fee? Are accessories reasonably priced? Is an extended warranty available and, if so, is the price reasonable? What is the return policy? Has the retailer been in business for a while or will it disappear from the face of the Earth when you need to make a warranty claim?

UP FOR DISCUSSION

If you want to add an element of interactivity to your Web site, FrontPage 2000's Discussion Web Wizard may be the magic that'll help it happen. This tool features the following:

Threaded messages and replies
Table of Contents
Customizable Submission Form
Confirmation Pages with Confirmation Field Components
Searchable index
Protected discussion messages

Although it has many steps, the Discussion Web Wizard is quite easy to complete. Just keep in mind that some features are worth including when you first create the discussion forum, while others -- such as frames -- may be implemented more easily and flexibly later.

DISPLAY IT AGAIN, SAM!

One of the outstanding features of XML is its capability to display the same data in multiple formats. Think about it: Creating multiple presentation targets can easily save you time -- and money.

After you map your data and create your XML documents, you're ready to think about presentation(s). If you want to create a detailed customer list to appear in a browser window, you can use simple Cascading Style Sheets.

If you decide to generate a more detailed customer list for your marketing team, you can do that, too. Just create another style sheet, apply it, and you're back in the game!

This can make the world of difference when you work with XML documents that contain lots and lots of data. You don't want to have to recreate entire XML documents -- and the folks at the World Wide Web Consortium thought you might not want to do that, either.

INTRODUCING THE FRONTPAGE EDITOR

The FrontPage editor is the program's built-in tool for creating and viewing Web pages. You can switch to Page view and then click a button at the bottom of the window -- Normal, HTML, or Preview -- to switch among the following modes:

Normal mode: FrontPage's visual editor for Web development. In Normal mode, you can place elements -- meaning text, graphics, applets, or whatever -- on-screen in any location, and FrontPage automatically generates HTML to account for the location of every object on-screen.
HTML mode: Enables you to edit raw HTML by hand, just as you did in the bad 'ol days (for the purist).
Preview mode: Enables you to see what your pages look like in a Web browser window before you put them up on the Internet. The FrontPage default browser is Internet Explorer.

DISCOVERING FRONTPAGE EXPRESS

Creating an initial Web page with FrontPage Express is fun because you can easily do most of the things that you may want to do with a Web page, though FrontPage Express doesn't let you do much extra. As you experiment with FrontPage Express, you find that you can re-create many features that you have seen on existing Web pages, such as headers, links, and embedded GIF and JPEG graphics. You can discover a great deal about the program (and about the choices available in Web authoring) just by fooling around with menu choices and clicking buttons; you can learn more by creating your own initial Web page.

You can use FrontPage Express to accomplish the following simple Web authoring tasks and create an initial Web page:

Create a title for your page.
Enter some text and format it.
Add a link.
Add an image.
Look at the underlying HTML-tagged text.
Publish the Web page.

EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE--PART 1 OF 4

There's nothing like keeping everything organized. When things have an order, it's easier to work, to find files, and to get things done. Well, the same thing applies to your Web site. You can organize files by different categories--say business files or travel files or some such thing. Here's how to get the job done.

Select View, Reports, Categories. You'll now see a list of all the different files you have in your web. (Note that there's a column called Category, which is probably blank. This is where you'll see the different categories for your files, once you assign them.) Select the file you want to categorize first. Right-click on the file and choose Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the Workgroup tab. There, you'll see a list of categories. Choose the appropriate categories for the file in question. Be aware that you can choose more than one category for each file. When you've finished choosing categories, click OK. You will now see the category you selected in the Category column.

EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE--PART 2 OF 4

Last time, you learned how to categorize the different files of your FrontPage web. But what if you have several files that belong in the same category? Do you have to sit and file each one separately? Not at all. In the Category view, simply select all the files that belong in the same category, right-click, and choose Properties from the context menu. Select the Workgroup tab in the Properties dialog box, and then select the category that applies to all the files you selected.

EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE--PART 3 OF 4

You like this categorizing thing; giving all the files an order appeals to you. But here's the catch: The categories that FrontPage provides--like Competition, Ideas, and Travel--don't work for you. No problem--just create your own categories.

First, you need to get to the category list. Do that by right-clicking on any file in the Category view and selecting Properties from the context menu. In the Properties dialog box, click the Workgroup tab. There, you'll see the list of categories. You'll also see the Categories button. Click that button once and you'll see the Master Category list. To add your own category, simply type it in the New Category text box and click the Add button. When you've finished adding categories, click OK.

EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE--PART 4 OF 4

Categories are all well and good, but they're really not much use if all your Business files are lumped together with your Travel files. What you really need to do is view only one category of files at a time.

While in the Category view, open the Reporting toolbar. To do this, select View, Toolbar, Reporting. The new toolbar will appear on your screen. Now, click the down arrow by the Report Setting box. (If you don't know which arrow that is, hold your cursor by the arrow for a moment. A label will appear that tells you you've located Report Setting.) Select the category you'd like to display. Only that category will appear on the screen. When you've finished looking over files in that category, go back to Report Setting and either choose another category or select all categories to display all files.

I'LL TAKE EVERYTHING

Let's say you want to do the same thing to your entire Web page--maybe you want center everything. You could do it the old-fashioned way: Choose Edit, Select All and then center everything. Or you could do it the speedy shortcut way: Simply press Ctrl-A on your keyboard and you'll select the entire page.

GOING DOWN THE FRONTPAGE FILE PATH

When you create a Web site in FrontPage, the program prompts you to save the site's pages in a folder on your hard drive. You specify the location of the folder using a notation called a file path. The file path describes the location of a file or folder by listing the name of the drive on which the file is stored, followed by the name of the folder (or, in the case of a single file, the filename). If the folder or file is stored inside another folder, that folder name is preceded by a backslash (\). So, for example, instead of describing the location of a file by saying "the file named index.htm that's stored inside the My Webs folder inside the My Documents folder on the C drive," you can just say C:\My Documents\My Webs\index.htm.

TAKE MY FILE, PLEASE

With the file upload field in FrontPage 2002, visitors can send you much more than just their feedback. They can actually upload files (real, honest-to-goodness files such as Web pages, Microsoft Word documents, or any other type of file) to a special folder in your Web site.

Say you're working on an online family tree. Instead of managing a bunch of unwieldy e-mail attachments, your relatives can instead upload their files and photos to a common folder in your Web site. All the files are in one place, nice and tidy.

Adding a file upload field to your form is easy, but a few extra steps are required to get the process underway. File upload fields also have special browser and server requirements. The FrontPage Help System explains, step-by-step, how to proceed. To jump straight to the appropriate topic, type file upload in the Type a Question for Help box in the upper-right corner of the FrontPage window, and then press Enter.

USING FLASH WITH IMPORTED MOVIE FILES

You can create and work with movie files in Flash, of course -- but you can also import movie files created in other programs (for example, Adobe Illustrator) and edit those imported movie files by using Flash tools. You use the File menu option to open and save files in Flash.

To open an existing movie file, do the following:

Choose File, Open.
The Open dialog box appears.
Click the arrow you see next to the Look in: field and select the file you want to open from the drop-down list that appears.
Click Open.
The contents of the movie file you selected in Step 2 appear on the Flash stage.

ABOVE THE FOLD

The portion of a Web page that's on-screen and immediately visible without scrolling is known as above the fold. That term is borrowed from newspapers, where the most important headlines and images appear literally above the fold in the newspaper. On a Web page, the most important content also appears in the area above the fold. People don't scroll down below the fold unless they have good reason. In your site planning and maintenance, consider which material is the most important (from all the material you want to present) and put it above the fold.

CREATE A NEW FOLDER

Having too many files in your main folder when you're working on a web page can get pretty unwieldy. So it's a good idea to create a folder to store files of a similar type. For example, you might create a folder named Graphics to store all your image files. When it comes time to insert a graphic, you know just where to look.

Right-click in the Folder List, and select New Folder from the shortcut menu (or select File, New, Folder). Type the name of the new folder, and then press Enter.

Organization really does work!

FRONTPAGE FONT TOOLS

In FrontPage 98, all font tools are located in the Font dialog box and the Format toolbar. The Font dialog box contains every tool you need to control your characters. The options in this dialog box enable you to change the font, style, color, and size of text in your page. To access the Font dialog box, choose Format, Font.

COPY CHARACTER AND PARAGRAPH FORMATTING

Say you've decided that all your headings on a particular page should be bold and italic, and you use the font Baskerville Old Face. Once you've created a particularly attractive heading format, you don't have to go through the page and manually make changes to each heading. You can copy formatting from selected characters or a paragraph and apply it to other text using the Format Painter.

Simply select the characters or paragraph that has the formatting you want to copy. Click the Format Painter button (it looks like a paintbrush) on the Standard toolbar. The cursor will turn into a paintbrush. Then select the text where you want to apply the formatting.

Voila! You have formatted text.

THROUGH SOME FONT OF YOUR OWN

If you use custom fonts in your Web pages, your visitors' computers must also have these fonts installed in order for your text to appear correctly on their screens. If your visitors don't have a particular font on their machines, any text you format in that font appears to them in their browsers' default font. For example, if you use the Garamond font in your pages and a visitor who doesn't have Garamond installed on her machine browses your page, she sees your page's text in Times (the default font for most browsers).

FRAME GAME

Two basic kinds of Web-page structures exist: regular and framed. A regular Web page is a standalone structure; frames are a way to place more than one Web page on-screen at a time. To the visitor, a framed site appears as one coherent whole, no different from a regular page. Frames can run vertically or horizontally. Frames give you more capabilities -- and a few extra headaches just to balance everything.

PLACING GRAPHICS RIGHT WHERE YOU WANT THEM

New Web designers (especially those who are used to working with page layout programs such as PageMaker or Quark) are often frustrated by how difficult simply placing a picture where they want on the page can be. In Web pages, graphics sit in line with the page's text flow, which means that you have limited control over the picture's position.

Fortunately, Web design has a loophole: the table. By structuring the layout of your text and graphics inside a table and then turning off the table's borders, you can create beautifully laid-out pages.

Another option is positioning, which enables you to place a picture in any spot on the page, independent of the page's text or other content. Positioning even makes layering text and pictures possible in your pages. Positioning can nudge your Web site toward the cutting edge of design, but only for those visitors using state-of-the-art Web browsers.

SEEING YOUR WAY THROUGH GRAPHICS

Transparent images have a clear area surrounding the object of interest. For example, in a photo of a watch, you may not want any background color surrounding the watch, just the watch itself sitting directly on the Web page. To achieve this effect, you use a transparent GIF, an image with a clear border area. The background color of the overall Web page shows through the transparent area, and the object of interest appears to "float" over the background.

APPLY PARAGRAPH STYLES TO HEADINGS

If you want people to visit (and return to) your Web site, you need to make it look professional, with text that's clean and easy to read. The easiest way to clean up text is to clearly define section headings, so readers aren't faced with a huge block of small text.

You can use paragraph styles to format headings and other text quickly and consistently. Say you want to set off all your paragraph headings. Click anywhere in the heading you want to format. Click the Style list on the toolbar, then click Heading 3. The heading will be bold and in a larger font than the rest of the text.

Heading styles in the Style list are based on universal HTML standards. Heading 1 is the largest possible text style for Web pages, and Heading 6 is the smallest.

TOPICAL HOME PAGES

A "topical home page" is a resource on a specific topic. A topic can be an interest or volunteer group to which the author belongs, in which case the page may grow over time into something much like a commercial Web site. (Creating a Web site for a group is a tremendous contribution that you can make, but watch what you may be getting yourself into!) The topical home page can be about any interest, cause, concern, obsession, or flight of fancy that you have. In this sense, the Web is like an out-of-control vanity press, allowing anyone to go on and on about anything -- sometimes offering something of great value, oftentimes not.

ADD A HORIZONTAL LINE TO A PAGE--PART 1 OF 2

Nothing's more boring than a Web page that just displays paragraph after paragraph of boring text. Graphics are a great way to break up the page, but you don't need to get fancy--a simple horizontal line does the job, too.

To insert a horizontal line, click Insert, Horizontal Line from Page View.

In the next tip, you'll learn how to modify the line by changing its width, height, alignment, and color.

ADD A HORIZONTAL LINE TO A PAGE--PART 2 OF 2

In the previous tip, you learned how to insert a horizontal line on your page to separate text or add an accent. After you add the line, go ahead and spruce it up--no need to stick yourself with a plain old black line!

First, double-click the horizontal line. To change its width, enter how long you want it to be--you can specify its width in pixels, or as a percentage of the page. Under Height, enter the number of pixels high the line should be. Under Alignment, specify whether you want the line to be right-justified, left-justified, or centered. In the Color box, choose a color. Then, click OK.

BEING HORIZONTAL--PART 1 OF 3

Nope, we're not talking about snoozing off. (It's the middle of the day! Wake up!) We're talking about adding a horizontal line to your Web page. These handy design items are useful if you want to divide your page. To add one, first position your cursor where you want the line to appear on your page. Now select Insert, Horizontal Line. Voila! A line will appear on your page.

BEING HORIZONTAL--PART 2 OF 3

Last time, you learned how to add a horizontal line to your page, but you weren't too impressed with the result. After all, it was a drab, thin black line. Want a little more color and pizzazz? Easy. Just double-click on your newly added horizontal line. The Horizontal Line Properties dialog box will appear. (They have one of those dialog boxes for everything, don't they?) In this dialog box, you can change the color, height, width, and alignment of your line. Tinker away and then click OK to have your changes take effect.

BEING HORIZONTAL--PART 3 OF 3

In this series of tips, you've seen all this great stuff about adding horizontal lines and making changes to them, but you can't seem to do that with your horizontal line. And it isn't plain ol' black and drab, either. What's going on here? No, there isn't some strange bug in your copy of FrontPage. In fact, it's no mystery at all. It's just that if you're using a theme on your Web page, the line that you add will stylistically adjust with the theme you've selected.

COVERING HOVERING

In FrontPage lingo, a hover button is a button that changes when you pass the mouse cursor over it. You can create hover buttons as part of your theme by selecting the Active graphics option. In addition, you can add your own customized buttons. To add a hover button, place the cursor where you want the button to appear, and select Insert, Active Elements, Hover button. This opens the Hover Button dialog box, which offers extensive customization options, including means to change text on the button, color and background of the button, and button size.

ALL'S NOT WELL THAT ENDS...WELL, WITH .HTM

FrontPage has one incredibly irritating feature that is absolutely inexplicable. It automatically renames imported files ending in the .html file extension so that they end in the .htm extension instead. Because there isn't a modern computer system in common usage that isn't capable of handing a four-character file extension, and since the proper file extension for Web pages is .html, there seems to be no valid reason in the world for the adjustment. After all, there just aren't that many DOS-based Web browsers out there, and Windows has been through several incarnations since version 3.1.

EDITING HTML OF A PAGE

FrontPage was designed so that you can create a great Web page without knowing an iota of HTML. However, if you're one of those people who just can't keep your fingers out of the cookie dough, you'll probably have to play with your page in HTML. Luckily, it's easy to edit the HTML code.

If you're editing a page on the Normal tab in Page View, click the HTML tab. You can type HTML yourself or use menu commands or properties dialog boxes to help you create and edit HTML.

KNOWING JUST ENOUGH HTML

Although you don't need to learn HTML to create Web pages with FrontPage, a bit of HTML knowledge certainly doesn't hurt. In fact, figuring out HTML is well worth your time. HTML is constantly evolving, with new tags and design effects making impressive debuts. Future versions of FrontPage are sure to support these features, but you don't want to wait for (or, heaven forbid, pay for) an upgrade so that you can use hot, new effects in your site. So consider learning the basics of HTML: You'll gain a greater understanding of Web publishing, and you can take advantage of HTML's latest features. At the very least, you can impress your colleagues at the next staff party.

HTML: NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T

Even if you're not planning to use any HTML (which you're probably not, since you're using FrontPage to build your Web site), it's sometimes handy to know how to see your HTML code. And since HTML is a (relatively) easy programming language, you can learn a lot about it just by skimming through the code you've inadvertently created. There are two ways to view HTML in FrontPage 2000.

If you want to see all the HTML code that's been created as you've built your page, simply click the HTML tab at the bottom of the screen. Suddenly all the images and text of your page will turn into HTML mumbo-jumbo. When you're done giving it a look-see, click the Normal tag, and your page will return to Normal.

You can also see just the HTML tags on your page. To do this, choose View, Reveal Tags. Now you'll see little yellow markers that tell you where each tag begins and ends. When you're done looking at the tags, simply choose View, Reveal Tags to turn them off.

SNEAKING A PEEK AT HTML IN FRONTPAGE EXPRESS

When working in a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) tool such as FrontPage Express, which shows you what the Web page is going to look like, you often want to look at the underlying HTML code. Doing so enables you to find out how HTML works and gives you the chance to make adjustments in the HTML tags that affect the way your page looks and works on the Web.

Here's how to check out your page's HTML code in FrontPage Express:

Choose View-->HTML.
The View or Edit HTML dialog box appears.
Make any changes that you want in the HTML.
Click the Close box in the upper-right corner of the window to close the dialog box.

Any changes you made in the HTML code that cause visible differences in your Web page are displayed in the FrontPage Express window.

SETTING SIGHTS ON HTML

Choose View, HTML.
The View or Edit HTML dialog box appears.
Make any changes that you want in the HTML.
Click the Close box in the upper-right corner of the window to close the dialog box.

Any changes you made in the HTML code that cause visible differences in your Web page are displayed in the FrontPage Express window.

CREATE A HYPERLINK TO A BOOKMARK

In the previous tip, you learned how to create a bookmark on your family history page so that users can jump directly to the section about Uncle Fred. Now you need to insert a hyperlink at the top of the page, so users know they can jump directly to that section.

In Page View, click your mouse where you want the hyperlink to show up (probably up near the top). Type the text you want to use for the hyperlink (how about "Uncle Fred"), then select the text. Click the Hyperlink button--it looks like a globe with a chain link--and select the page that contains the bookmark (if it's not on the same page). In the Bookmark box, click the bookmark you want to use as the destination (remember, we called ours "Fred").

Now when visitors click that hyperlink, they'll jump directly to the information about Uncle Fred on your family history page. And barring outstanding warrants, that should make Fred a happy guy.

HYPERLINK COLOR PALETTE

You can change the colors of links on your Web pages. Hyperlinks have three colors, and the color revealed at any given time depends on a visitor's actions. Normally, an unvisited link is blue, whereas a link that has been previously followed is purple. At the moment when a link is clicked, it turns red. Any or all of these colors are fair game for the Web designer, but you probably should change them only when it's necessary, because you may end up confusing visitors who expect to see the traditional colors. When is it necessary? When the usual colors don't show up well or look right with a color scheme you're using for the rest of the page. To change them, select Format, Background from the menu, and then click the color squares labeled Hyperlink, visited Hyperlink, and Active Hyperlink. FrontPage delivers color options to suit the most mundane or adventurous spirit.

SET HYPERLINK COLORS

We all know that Web hyperlinks are blue until you click on them, then they become purple, right? But wait--you may have seen sites that use different colors and wondered, "Hey, how'd they do that?" Well, now you can do it too--it's easy to change the colors that a Web browser will use to display hyperlinks. You can select three different colors: one for a link that hasn't been selected, one for a link that is currently selected, and one for a link that has already been followed.

In Page View, right-click the page and click Page Properties on the shortcut menu. Click the Background tab. Select the colors you want to use in the Hyperlink, Visited Hyperlink, and Active Hyperlink boxes. Then, click OK.

ADD FONT EFFECTS TO A HYPERLINK

When you've surfed around the Web and back a few times, most sites start to look alike. Make yours stand out by jazzing up your hyperlinks. It's easy to enhance a link so that when visitors position their mouse pointer over the text, it changes font.

Let's make our hyperlinks turn bold and red. In Page View, right-click the page and click Page Properties on the shortcut menu. Click the Background tab. Under Formatting, select the Enable Hyperlink Rollover Effects check box. Click Rollover Style and choose the options you want--in this case, red and bold. Click OK.

Sorry, you cannot add these effects if the page uses a theme.

BROKEN HYPERLINKS

How many of the hyperlinks within your Web site are "broken?" How many will lead to a "404 Page Not Found" error? A quick report in FrontPage will tell you:

Open View, Reports.
Choose Site Summary.

This report lists the number of broken links along with those that haven't been checked. To see details on the broken links, double-click that row.

FANCY FONTS--PART 1 OF 2

Changing fonts is part of the fun of designing a Web page. To change font style and size, first highlight the text in question. (Or, if you want to set a font style for a whole Web page, position your cursor at the top of the page before you've added any text.) Now, look at the toolbars at the top of your screen. There, you'll see a pull-down list that offers innumerable font styles. Next to font styles, you'll see another pull-down list for font sizes. Then, on the far right of the toolbar, there's the option for font color. Tinker with these three options to create the look you want.

FANCY FONTS--PART 2 OF 2

Our previous tip was on font basics--how to change style, color, and size. This might have been stuff you already knew, but there's a little more to font than you might have imagined. Again, select the text you'd like to change. Choose Format, Font to open the Font dialog box. Now you can use this dialog box to change style, color, and size, just as you could on the toolbar--but that would be silly. Instead, check out the Effects section. Use these options to create effects like underlining or strikethrough or small caps. Once you've specified the effect you want, click OK to apply it.

FLAUNTING YOUR FONTS

Only three fonts are in common usage on all the major computer systems. Arial (also called Helvetica), Times (also called Times Roman or Times New Roman), and Courier (also called Courier New). If you choose other fonts that are available on your computer, your pages may not display the same way on other people's systems. As a default measure, a visitor's Web browser will try its best to accommodate your font settings by displaying the font that it believes to be the closest to the one that you have specified.

RECALCULATE HYPERLINKS

If you've recently made a lot of changes to your web in progress, or if others are working on the same project, you'll want to periodically make sure that everything is current--especially hyperlinks. If you're linking to a page and it doesn't work, it only makes you look bad.

So, once in a while select Tools, Recalculate Hyperlinks, then click Yes. Doing this will fix all broken hyperlinks. It will also update other unneeded data, such as deleting unused themes.

COLLECTING FEEDBACK--PART 1 OF 4

One of the cool things about the Web is that it allows people to communicate with one another. Your Web page is no exception: You should be sure to offer ways for people to talk to you. One way is by creating a mail-to link, which is basically an email hyperlink that lets people send you instant emails. Here's how.

Begin by placing your cursor where you want the mail-to link to appear. Select Insert, Hyperlink. In the Create Hyperlink dialog box, you'll see a line asking for a URL. To the right of that URL line, you'll notice a series of icons. The second icon from the right looks like the back of an envelope. (To be sure you have the right icon, hold your cursor over it; the context-sensitive label should read Make a hyperlink that sends E-mail".) Click once on that icon.

At this point, a new dialog box will appear--the Create E-mail Hyperlink dialog box. It's asking for the email address where you'd like all those visitor emails to be sent. Type in the correct email address, check it twice, and click OK. Now you'll see only the Create Hyperlink dialog box, with the new email address in the URL line. Click OK. Your Web page will now include a mail-to link. When visitors click on it, they'll automatically get an email screen so they can send you a message.

COLLECTING FEEDBACK--PART 2 OF 4

In our previous tip, you learned about adding a mail-to link to your Web page in order to make it easier for your visitors to communicate with you. But there's more than one way to solicit information from the folks who are viewing your page. You can add a feedback form, and it couldn't be easier to do. Simply position the cursor where you want the form to appear and select Insert, Form, Form. Voila! An insta-form, with a Submit and Reset button, all ready to go! (Tune in next time for more information on customizing this form.)

COLLECTING FEEDBACK--PART 3 OF 4

Well, in our previous tip you inserted a form on your Web page, but then you started wondering "Hey, this doesn't look like a really good way to encourage a dialog with my cyber-visitors." And you're right. You'll have to spiff it up a little to convince folks to type in their thoughts. Here are some tips on how to do that.

Once your form is in place, add a little extra room in it, by pressing the Enter key a few times. Ah--some breathing space. Now, move your cursor up to the top of the form. Select Insert, Form. You'll see lots of options, ranging from a one-line text box to a drop-down menu. These are all the different kinds of items you can add to your feedback form to encourage people to actually send you information.

Overwhelmed? Here's an example: Select Insert, Form, One-Line Text Box. A small, rectangular box will appear on your screen. Next to it, type

Your Name

Now, add other text boxes with other information--like an email address. You can take advantage of the check boxes and radio buttons when you have a series of different choices. Use the scrolling text box when you want people to be able to send you a paragraph's worth of information.

COLLECTING FEEDBACK--PART 4 OF 4

In the past few days, you've learned how to add different links and forms to your Web page so visitors will be able to communicate with you. But when you went to try out these nifty new items to be sure they worked properly, you couldn't type anything in the text boxes and the mail-to link went nowhere. Think you got it all wrong? Not a chance. You're just not looking at it from the right point of view. At the bottom of your screen, you'll see three tabs: Normal, HTML, and Preview. You've been working in the Normal tab, which is just where you should be. However, when you want to test out the features you've just added, you need to jump over to the Preview tab. Once you click on that tab, you'll be able to type in the feedback form, click on radio buttons, or send yourself an email using the mail-to link.

ON THE FILE PATH TO FAME

MR. FIX-IT

Finding a broken hyperlink isn't the end of the world. You can always fix it, right? After you do, verify the fix: Open View, Reports, choose Site Summary, then right-click on the link and choose Verify. Of course you'll have to be connected to the Internet to verify any external links.

CREATING A DISCUSSION FORUM

If you want to add an element of interactivity to your Web site, FrontPage 2000's Discussion Web Wizard may be the helpmate you're hoping for. This tool features

Threaded messages and replies
Table of Contents
Customizable Submission Form
Confirmation Pages with Confirmation Field Components
Searchable index
Protected discussion messages

Although the Discussion Web Wizard involves many steps, the process is quite easy to complete. Just keep in mind that some features are worth including when you first create the discussion forum, while others -- such as frames -- may be implemented more easily and flexibly later, if you want to include them.

DELETE A FRAME

In the last few tips, you've learned how to set up a frames page and then set the initial page. At some point, you'll want to delete a frame from your page.

In Page View, open the frames page you want to modify and click the Normal tab. Then select the frame that you want to delete. Select Frames, Delete Frame. This will delete only the frame from the frames page, not the page that was displayed in the frame. Adjacent frames will expand to fill the space left by the deleted frame.

THE GREAT FRAME-UP--PART 1 OF 5

The topic of today's lesson? Frames. Nope, we're not talking about the stuff that neatly outlines the pictures you have hanging on your walls at home, or those nifty eyeglasses that help you see your way through the world. In Web-speak, frames are a way to create several pages that the visitor can view at once. For example, you have a frame across the top of the page that has the company name, a frame down the side of the page with a table of contents, and another frame for the rest of the page that has the bulk of the information. "How is this different from borders?" you ask. Good question. Here's the difference: When you click on a link in one frame, you have the option to change the material on that section of the Web page only; in other words, you don't necessarily change the whole page as you would on a page with borders.

When you create a page with frames, you're actually also creating what's called a frame source page. The frame source page basically acts as a traffic director for the other frame pages. Let's put it this way: If you have a page that has three frames, that page needs one frame source page to refer to, so it knows where to put which frame.

Whew! Hope that clarifies frames. Over the next few days, we'll learn how to build them.

THE GREAT FRAME-UP--PART 2 OF 5

To create a page with frames, start by choosing File, New, Page. In the New Page dialog box, you'll see a tab for Frames Pages. Click that tab and you'll see a plethora of different options for your frame-enhanced page. Don't know which to choose? Select the option and check in the lower-right corner of the dialog box. There, you'll see a preview of what the page will look like. Once you've picked the perfect frame page, simply click OK.

Doesn't look like much, does it? Just a bunch of gray blocks in a gray page, with a few buttons. Well, it might not look like much, but this is the magical frame source page of which you've heard. You'll notice that in each section of the frame source page, there are two buttons: Set Initial Page and New Page.

You'll use these buttons create the different pages of your frame-enhanced page: If you want to start from scratch, click the New Page button. If you want to essentially import a page that you've already created, click the Set Initial Page button and find the page on your hard drive. Keep in mind that you'll have to go through this procedure for each frame of your Web page.

THE GREAT FRAME-UP--PART 3 OF 5

Last time when you created your frame, you picked the best of the options that FrontPage had to offer, but you still weren't exactly sure what you wanted your page to look like. Not a problem--as usual, FrontPage has some editing options that will allow you to tweak to your heart's delight.

Let's say you want to split a frame into two separate frames. First, position your cursor in the frame section that you want to split. Now, choose Frames, Split Frame. In the Split Frame dialog box, you can choose whether you'd like to split the frame into rows or columns. Once you've made your choice, click OK and the frame will be split in two. Note that once you've done this, the new section of your page will be gray, and you'll have to create the new page that belongs in that framed section.

Tinkering with frames can be an endless task. You'll notice that a thick line surrounds each framed section. If you hold your cursor over that line, your cursor arrow will turn into a short black line with an arrow pointing in each direction. Once you see that short black line, hold down your mouse and drag the line. In this way, you can adjust the size of each framed section of the page. Stay tuned--more on frames next time.

THE GREAT FRAME-UP--PART 4 OF 5

Saving your Web pages with FrontPage is normally a one-two job, no more complicated than saving a document in, say, Word or Excel. Unfortunately, it's a little trickier when you're working with frames.

When you go to save your frame (by selecting either File, Save or File, Save As), FrontPage will ask you to save each section of your frame page. And then, to top it all off, it will ask you to name and save the frame source page. How will you know which section of the page it's asking you to name? When you're saving a page with frames, the Save dialog box includes a little diagram of the page. As it asks you to save each section of the page, it will highlight that section in the diagram. When it's time to save the frame source page, it will outline the entire page.

Here's another tip about saving frame pages: Name the sections of your page and the frame source page something similar. That way, if you create other pages with frames, FrontPage (and you!) will be able to identify which frames go with which frame source pages.

THE GREAT FRAME-UP--PART 5 OF 5

You know etiquette. You know netiquette. But did you know that some browsers can't display frames? For the folks who are still using those browsers, you should do the polite thing and create a page that doesn't require frames capability. It won't take much of your time and it is, after all, the polite thing to do. Simply look at the lower left of your screen at all the various tabs. Find the tab called No Frames and click it. Onto this page, you'll want to copy all of the most relevant material from your frame-enhanced page. Then, FrontPage will be able to offer a backup plan for those folks who don't have the browser support for frames.

SET THE INITIAL PAGE DISPLAYED IN A FRAME

In the previous tip, you learned how to create a frames page that will hold a table of contents. After you create a frames page, you must set the initial page to display in each frame when the page is viewed in a browser--otherwise, it will display empty frames.

If you've just used the Contents template to create your frames page, you'll see that each frame contains a button that says Set Initial Page. Click the button, and navigate to the page you want displayed in that frame. Then, just click OK.

INTRODUCTION TO FRAMES

Are you ready to do something a little more advanced in FrontPage? If you've been surfing the Web at all (and we hope you have), you've probably noticed that many Web pages are divided into different areas called frames. When you click a hyperlink in one frame, the page pointed to by that hyperlink is displayed in another frame. This allows Web page designers to place a table of contents, say, on the left side of the browser window.

Suppose you click on a hyperlink in the table of contents called "Part I." Once you click that hyperlink, the table of contents will remain the same, but you'll see the content for Part I, perhaps containing an introduction of some sort, displayed in another frame.

Stay tuned... In the next few tips, we'll learn how to create and set up frames pages.

CREATE A FRAMES PAGE

In the previous tip, we learned about frames pages. Today, as promised, we'll discuss how to create them.

FrontPage makes it easy to create frames pages using templates in which the navigation between frames is already set up for you. In the Contents Frames Page template, for example, clicking a hyperlink in the Contents frame on the left displays a page in the Main frame (called the target frame) on the right. Whew, did you get all that?

Select File, New, Page, and click the Frames Pages tab. Let's say we want to create a table of contents. Select the Contents template. Note that when you click a template, FrontPage displays a thumbnail showing that template's frames layout in the Preview area. It also displays a summary and suggested use of the template in the Description. Click OK to select the Contents template. You'll get a layout of your frames page, though there's nothing in it yet. In the next tip, we'll learn how to set the initial page.

FOCUS ON FRAMES

Frames are the backbone of your animation effects. When you start a new Flash file, it opens with a single layer and hundreds of placeholder frames in the Timeline. Before you start animating objects, you need to understand how frames work.

Frames control time and movement. The number of frames you use in your Flash movie combined with the speed at which they play determine the length of the movie.

You can work with several different types of frames in the Flash Timeline: placeholder frames, keyframes, static frames, and tweened frames.

EDITING HTML OF A FRAMES PAGE

In the previous tip, you learned how to edit the HTML code of a page--just click the HTML tab while you're in Page View. But what if your page has frames? Fear not; the method works much the same.

If you're editing a frames page in Page View, click the Frames Page HTML tab to edit the HTML of your frames page (or of any page displayed in a frame).

TARGETING FRAMES--PART 1 OF 4

The best thing about a frames page is the way you can manipulate it. For example, let's say you have a table of contents in a left-hand frame. The items in that table of contents are for the seasons: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. But here's the cool part: Your visitor clicks on Summer and voila--the information for Summer appears in the central frame of the page. When the visitor clicks on Autumn, the Summer information is replaced by information on Autumn. Mind you, even though information changes in the main frame, the table of contents (and any other frames on the page) remains the same.

How to pull off this neat trick? Think about it as a two-step process: First, you have to tell FrontPage where you want the new information to appear. (In our example, that would be the main frame of the page.) Next, you have to tell FrontPage what information you want to have loaded into that frame. (In our example, that would be Summer, Autumn, Winter, or Spring, depending on the link that the visitor clicked.) Today, we'll just stick to the first step.

Okay. Roll up your sleeves and let's get going. Anywhere in your frames page, right-click. Select Page Properties from the context menu. In the Page Properties dialog box, look for the Default Target Frame option. To the far right of that option, you'll see an icon of a small pencil, drawing dots. Click that icon.

Now you'll find yourself in the Target Frame dialog box. Here you'll see an image of the current frames page, with all of the different framed sections. Click on the section of the frames page that you want to set as the target. Remember, the target is the section of the page that will change, or the section of the page in which the new information will appear. Once you've selected the appropriate target, click OK. Back in the Page Properties dialog box, click OK again.

Your target is set. Tune in next time to learn how to move information into the target frame.

TARGETING FRAMES--PART 2 OF 4

Last time you learned how to create a target for your frames page. Today we'll learn how to load new information into that frame target.

Let's use the same example we used last time: You have a page with a table of contents down the left-hand side of the screen. The links in that table of contents refer to the four seasons. You set the main frame (in our example, the only other frame outside the table of contents) as the target for that information on the four seasons.

First, double-click to select the word Summer in your table of contents. Now find the Hyperlink icon at the top of your screen--it looks like a globe with a sideways figure-8 in front of it. Click this icon once. In the Create Hyperlink dialog box, find the page you've created that has the information on Summer. Select that page and then click OK.

All you've really done is create a basic hyperlink, but because you created the main frame as a target, the information on Summer will load in the main frame when you click the link. Test it out by clicking the Preview tab at the bottom of the screen and then clicking the link.

TARGETING FRAMES--PART 3 OF 4

Now that you know the basics about targeting frames, you might want to branch out. Let's say, for example, that you have a frames page with three frame sections--a top border, a side table of contents, and a main section. Obviously, you want most of the information from the table of contents to load into the main frame. However, there's one bit of info--some company stuff--that you want to have appear in the top border, not the main section. In that case, you have to change the target when you create the hyperlink. Here's how:

First, select the word that you want visitors to link from and find the Hyperlink icon at the top of your screen. (Remember, it looks like a globe with a sideways figure-8 in front of it.) Click the Hyperlink icon. In the Create Hyperlink dialog box, find the Optional section, and look for the Target Frame option. Click on the little pencil to the far right of this option. Now you're in the Target Frame dialog box. Select the frame that you want the information to appear in. (In our example, it's the top border.) Once that area is selected, click OK. Back in the Create Hyperlink dialog box, find the information that you want to link to and select it. Click OK.

Note that you've only changed the target location for this one link. The rest of the links on the page will still appear in the main section (assuming that's the default target you've created). Try the whole thing out by clicking the Preview tab at the bottom of the page and clicking the link.

TARGETING FRAMES--PART 4 OF 4

Let's say you want a link to overwrite your whole frames page and basically reset the window. How do you do that? Just follow these directions:

First, select the word that you want visitors to link from and find the Hyperlink icon at the top of your screen. (Remember, it looks like a globe with a sideways figure-8 in front of it.) Click the Hyperlink icon. In the Create Hyperlink dialog box, find the Optional section, and look for the Target Frame option. Click on the little pencil to the far right of this option. Now you're in the Target Frame dialog box. There, you'll see a list of Common Targets. Select the one called Whole Page and click OK. Back in the Create Hyperlink dialog box, find the page that you want to link to and select it. (Note that if you want to jump out to the Web, that's okay too. Just type the address of the page in the URL box.) Click OK.

Test it out by clicking the Preview tab at the bottom of the page and then clicking your link. The frames page will disappear and a whole new page--the one you created the link to--will appear on the page.

FRONTPAGE ENABLES OFFICE FUNCTIONS

FrontPage comes with three Web components that enable you to add Office functionality to your Web site in the form of working spreadsheets, charts, and Pivot Tables. These Web components are best reserved for use on an intranet site because they have specific server and browser requirements: The site must be published on a server that has FrontPage Server Extensions installed, and visitors must be using Internet Explorer (version 3.0 and later) and have Microsoft Office (version 2000 and later) with Office Web components installed on their computers. If your publishing environment meets these conditions and you'd like to know more, visit the FrontPage Help system for details. To get there, in the upper right corner of the FrontPage window, type Office Web Component in the Ask a Question list box, and then press Enter.

HELPING TO FIND FRONTPAGE HELP

Inevitably, you're going to need some help getting through the many intricacies of FrontPage 2000. You have the following three basic options for Help:

Help Library: As do other Office 2000 products, FrontPage 2000 features a large, searchable database of key phrases and topics that can lead you to an answer for your question. To use the FrontPage 2000 Help, choose Help, Microsoft FrontPage Help and then click the Contents tab. You can also press F1 to bring up the Help Contents.
The Answer Wizard: The Answer Wizard is new to FrontPage 2000. You type your question, and the Wizard attempts to provide relevant topics that answer your questions. To use the Answer Wizard, choose Help, Microsoft FrontPage Help and then click the Answer Wizard tab.
Online Help: If you're connected to the Internet, you can visit the Microsoft Office Help [http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/default.aspx] Web site. At the Microsoft Web site, you find up-to-date information about each Office product, as well as a wealth of other resources to help you make the most of FrontPage. To access the site from FrontPage, choose Help, Office on the Web, and FrontPage launches your default Web browser.

HIDE IT AWAY

You're looking at your Web site using the Navigation or Hyperlinks view, but your screen is also cluttered by that Folders List (not to be confused with the Folders view). So you look in the corner of the Folders List for that handy little "X" that usually lets you close a given screen or program. No such luck. But getting rid of the Folders List is really quite simple. Check your toolbar at the top of the screen. There's an icon--about the fifth from the left--called Folders List. (You can tell that you have the right one by holding your cursor over the icon. A context-sensitive pop-up box that says Folders List should appear.) Click this icon once, and the Folders List will disappear. Want to get it back? Simply click the Folders List icon again.

MODIFY COLOR CODING OF HTML

If you're more comfortable editing in HTML (which you can do by clicking the HTML tab in Page View), you've probably noticed that FrontPage automatically color-codes items to differentiate between text on the page, tags, attribute names, attribute values, comments, and scripts. But what if you want all text to be green instead of the usual black? No problem--just change it!

In Page View, open the page you want to modify. Select Tools, Page Options, then click the Color Coding tab. For each HTML element that you want to modify, click the arrow in the color box to select the color you want to use. To select or create a custom color using the Eyedropper tool, click More Colors.

Tip-in-a-tip: To reset color-coding to its original default settings, click Reset Colors.

ON THE GO, GO

You've got to do things so fast that you scarcely have time to stop and click that mouse. If you prefer keyboarding and want an overview of all the shortcut keys that FrontPage offers, open FrontPage Help and type

keyboard shortcuts

in the Answer Wizard. There, you'll get a list of all the different shortcuts you could ever imagine.

VECTOR GRAPHIC FILES

A vector-based graphic file stores a set of instructions for creating an image rather than storing a value for each pixel. Therefore, vector graphic files are much smaller, and often can be edited in more flexible ways, than bitmap graphic files. The vector-based format is ideal for things such as line art and text/graphic combinations, whereas the bitmap-based format is necessary for photographs.

SIGN THE GUESTBOOK, PLEASE

Guestbooks are the digital equivalent of a graffiti wall, which doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to contain limericks or dirty words. But they are designed so that people can leave short messages for all to see.

Many guestbooks offer an additional option that allows users to create messages that only the guestbook owner -- the Webmaster -- can view. This enables people to leave private comments for you.

The guestbook stacks the messages that people post one after the other, with the vast majority of guestbooks putting the newest message on top and moving all the others down. A few guestbooks work the other way around, but you have to scroll (and scroll and scroll . . .) to get to the most recent message.

HACKERS GOOD, CRACKERS BAD

When you read about computer security, you'll see two terms used: hacker and cracker. Hacker carries a casual connotation, especially in the mass media, where the word often refers to anyone who tinkers under the hood of computers, whether for good or evil purposes. In most Internet circles, the two terms take on a defining difference.

Hackers are the ones who know how to make their computers do everything short of sit up and dance. They can often rewrite parts of any program to perform better than before and can offer helpful solutions to others.
Cracker was created to avoid confusing the good hackers with those with criminal intent: stealing information, using your machine to invade other sites, and so on.

SAVE IT FOR LATER

Just because you find a broken component, doesn't mean you have the time to fix it right now. If you're in that busy boat, just make sure you put that fix on the Task List, so you'll remember to handle it later. In the Component Errors report, right-click the item and choose Add Task from the option menu.

GO TO A LINE NUMBER ON THE HTML TAB IN PAGE VIEW

If you're an HTML code warrior, you probably spend a lot of time editing in HTML. Did you know you can jump to a specific line number in your code, rather than scrolling down?

Right-click anywhere in the HTML tab, then click Go To on the shortcut menu. Type the number of the line you want to go to in the Enter Line Number box. Click OK.

And there you are

I DON'T LIKE IT--PART 1 OF 2

You've been fiddling around on your Web page and you suddenly come to the conclusion that you don't like any of the changes you've just made. Lucky for you, FrontPage allows you an unlimited number of Undos. To undo anything, simply press the Ctrl-Z key combo on your keyboard or click the Undo icon on the toolbar at the top of the FrontPage screen.

I DON'T LIKE IT--PART 2 OF 2

You know that if you want to undo something in FrontPage, you can, but what if you want to undo a lot of somethings? Say a few steps. Easy. Instead of undoing each individual step, FrontPage allows you to undo several at a time. Check out the Undo icon on the FrontPage toolbar. (It looks like an arrow that's pointing to the lower-left corner of the page.) To the right of that icon you'll notice a small menu arrow. Click and hold that arrow, and you'll see the last seven commands you just completed when you were working in FrontPage. Highlight as many items as you want; when you release your mouse button, FrontPage will undo them all.

IMAGE GYMNASTICS

FrontPage makes flipping and rotating Web page images easy. Here are the steps:

Click the graphic that you want to flip or rotate.
Click the Rotate Left, Rotate Right, Flip Horizontal, or Flip Vertical button on the Picture Toolbar, depending on the action that you want to initiate.
Rotate Left rotates the image 90 degrees to the left.
Rotate Right rotates the image 90 degrees to the right.
Flip Horizontal mirrors the image left to right.
Flip Vertical mirrors the image top to bottom.

IMAGE MAPPING--PART 1 OF 3

Let's say you have an image and you want to create a link from that image. Easy enough. But what if you want to create several links from one image? Can it be done? Yes. In fact, there's a name for such a beast: It's called an image map.

To create an image map, first click on the image to select it. Now, look for the picture toolbar at the bottom of your screen. On the far right of the picture toolbar, you'll see three icons that are each the outline of a different shape--a rectangle, a circle, and a polygon. Click on the rectangle and you'll notice that your cursor turns into a pencil. When you click and drag that pencil on your image, you'll draw a rectangle. As soon as you release your cursor, the Create Hyperlink dialog box will appear. Type the address of the URL that you'd like to link to from this hotspot on your image. Then, click OK. Continue to add hotspots to your image using the Rectangular Hotspot, Circular Hotspot, or Polygonal Hotspot icon. When you're done, take your image map for a test-drive by viewing it in your browser and jumping to all the different sites to which your image has links.

IMAGE MAPPING--PART 2 OF 3

Once you create an image map, you might want to go back and check out where you put all your hotspots. To highlight hotspots on your image, first click once on the image to select it. Now look for the Highlight Hotspots icon on the picture toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This icon looks like an arrow pointing to an aqua-blue rectangle. Click the icon, and you'll see all the hotspots in your image, neatly outlined.

IMAGE MAPPING--PART 3 OF 3

When you're creating an image map, it's always a good idea to use an image that already suggests different links. For example, if you have a map of the US, it only seems natural for you to have links from different sections of the map to your different store locations across the country. However, as obvious as your image map may seem to you, it never hurts to make things a little clearer. The easiest way is to add text labels to your image map.

To do so, first click on the image and highlight the image hotspots. Now look for an icon with a big A in the picture toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This is the text label icon. Click it once. A box will appear in the center of your image. Type the text label you want to add to your image map. Now, click outside the label box. Once you've done this, you can click the label again and--while holding down your mouse--drag it to the section of the image that it's meant to label. Continue to add labels for as many hotspots as you have on your image map.

EDITING IMAGES IN FRONTPAGE 2000

Cropping reduces an image in size. Cropping images comes in handy if, say, you have a picture of you and your old boyfriend and you want to eliminate your former flame from the picture. Cropping cuts away everything that remains outside the rectangular cropping box. (FrontPage's cropping features are limited in that you can crop only rectangular areas.) If you specify an area, you're specifying the area of the image that you want to keep, not the area that you want to cut.

CONCERNING YOURSELF WITH IMAGES

You might want to get into the habit of browsing through the Microsoft Clip Gallery Live [http://dgl.microsoft.com/default.asp?nEULA=1]Web site even when you don't have a specific need for an image. Microsoft updates the artwork periodically, and you'll be much more aware of what's available if you look over its offerings at leisure rather than wait for an emergency need to arise. In fact, downloading anything that strikes your fancy while you're there might be a good idea, because you never know when the clip may come in handy.

NAVIGATING INTRASITE

After you have more than four or five Web pages on your site, you should really think hard about navigation within your site. Don't just toss intrasite links into body text, mixed in with links to other sites, graphics, and who knows what else. Provide centralized areas that help the user move around within your site.

A simple solution to the intrasite navigation problem is always to provide a list of all your major site areas at the bottom of each page. (For small sites, each "major area" of your site is a single page; for larger sites, you have major areas, subareas within major areas, and more.)

Early in the development of your Web site, create a graphic that provides links to the major areas of your site. Use the graphic at the bottom of each page. Keep the graphic simple, but do provide one; it really upgrades the appearance and usability of your site.

DROPPING IN JAVA APPLETS

Java applets run the gamut from the trivial and useless to the fabulous. Many of them perform some type of image modification, like the popular Lake applet. Others add rotating banner ads or scrolling tickertape-style messages. The really nice thing about Java applets is that, like JavaScript, they run on the visitor's machine, which reduces the load on your Web server. One drawback, however, is the length of time that they take to be downloaded to the visitor and the slight delay on their end while Java starts up (if it isn't already running).

JAVA AND JAVA SCRIPT: NOT SYNONYMOUS

To correct a common point of confusion, JavaScript and Java aren't the same. In fact, Java is what's known as an object-oriented programming language, and it's not for the faint of heart. JavaScript, however, which shares only some minimal syntax structure in common with Java, is a simple scripting language that you can add to your Web pages quickly and easily.

KEEP OUT--PART 1 OF 2

Sometimes, you just want to keep things under wraps. If you have files for your Web page that you'd like to tuck away where co-workers won't have access to them, you can create a hidden file. To do that, choose File, New, Folder. When you name your new folder, make sure it begins with an underscore (for example, _keepout). That underscore ensures no one can see the private folder.

KEEP OUT--PART 2 OF 2

In our previous tip, you learned how to create a hidden folder. Well, that's all well and good, but it doesn't help much if you can't see the folder yourself. To view all hidden folders, select Tools, Web Settings. In the Web Settings dialog box, click the General tab. Look for the option Show Documents In Hidden Directories. Once you select that option and click OK, you'll be able to see all hidden folders.

KEEPING IT ALL TOGETHER

You might add stuff to your Web site--such as photos, clip art, or sounds--that you normally store in a folder on your hard drive. And FrontPage is smart: You can tell it to point to those files, and it will call them up whenever you want to view the page that uses that photo (or clip art or what have you). But that won't work well when you post your site to the Web for the whole world to see. So here's a tip: Make a copy of any files that you insert on your Web site and store them together with the other pages of your Web.

SOME KEYBOARD ACTION

Wanna close a dialog box in a hurry? Instead of using your mouse to laboriously to do the job, just press Alt-F4 on your keyboard. How's that for a quickie?

KEEPING UP WITH KEYWORDS

A keyword search is to a Web site what a knowledgeable tour guide is to a big city: Both help you bypass the flotsam and get straight to the stuff you want to see. The Web Search component in all versions of FrontPage enables you to add a keyword search to your Web site in under a minute. Within the Web Search component nestled in a page in your site, visitors type words or phrases into a text box and then click a button to activate the search. In a moment, a linked list of Web pages matching the search request appears. From there, your visitors just click a link to go to a particular page. To use the Web Search component, you must publish your Web site on a host Web server that has FrontPage Server Extensions installed.

KEYWORD: WEB SEARCH

SPEAKING THEIR LANGUAGE

According to Web researchers, Web users overwhelmingly speak English as either a first or second language. Consequently, the great majority of Web content, Web creation tools, and Web browsers use the English language. Even ten years after the birth of the Web -- in Europe -- North America is still the "center of gravity" for Web access. This will gradually change as other countries catch up to Web penetration in the United States.

MIND YOUR MANNERS--PART 1 OF 2

You don't pick your teeth at the dinner table, and you help little old ladies cross the street if they have heavy groceries. So why should your manners fade away just because you're on the Net? Well, if you design your Web site without checking out how it looks in different browsers, it may well be that you're making it tough on some of your visitors. Remember, every browser is not created the same. So, view your page on several different browsers. Don't have lots of browsers loaded on your machine? No problem: Ask friends with different browsers to provide you with some feedback.

MIND YOUR MANNERS--PART 2 OF 2

On the go and don't have time to check out that Web page when you're sitting at your computer? No problem: You can just print it and take a paper copy with you. Except--arghh!--the colors are practically unreadable when that Web page is put on the printed page.

Don't let this happen to you. Even if your color combos look great on screen, be sure they look okay once they're printed. Try to avoid light (for example, yellow or white) text colors--otherwise, your printed copies will only waste paper!

SET PAGE MARGINS

A little white space on your Web pages is a good thing. It makes text easier to read and sets graphics off from each other as well as surrounding text. So be sure to set margins on your pages so your text and images don't get scrunched against the edge of a page.

In Page View, right-click the page, then click Page Properties on the shortcut menu. Click the Margins tab. To set a top margin, select the Specify Top Margin check box and enter a value for the height of the margin in pixels. For the left margin, select the Specify Left Margin check box and enter a value for the width of the margin in pixels. Click OK, and you're set.

REFRESHING YOUR COMPUTER MEMORY

If your computer says it's out of memory, it just means that a part of the machine is filled to capacity. Memory -- known in computer dweeb circles as RAM (random-access memory, pronounced ram, like the sheep) -- enables your computer to run programs. Photoshop Elements needs lots of RAM -- this version requires you to have a minimum of 64MB in your computer and prefers that you have even more. If you can't launch Elements because of a memory error, you have three options:

Free up RAM by quitting all other programs that are currently running.
PC users: Restart your computer by choosing the Shut Down command from the Windows Start menu and then choosing the Restart the Computer option. After your computer restarts, try to launch Elements again. Mac users: Restart the computer by choosing Special, Restart at the Finder and try to launch Elements after the Finder reappears.
Buy and install more RAM.

If you've never tried to upgrade the RAM in your machine, seek out expert advice from your local computer guru.

EXPAND THE MENU--PART 1 OF 2

You click on a pull-down menu, looking for that function that you know should be there, but you just can't find it. But if you look at the bottom of the menu, you'll see a double arrow pointing down. Hold your cursor over that double arrow for just a second and the menu will automatically expand. Whew!

EXPAND THE MENU--PART 2 OF 2

In our previous tip, you tried to get your menu to automatically expand by holding your cursor on the double arrow at the bottom of a pull-down menu, but it just didn't work. Instead, you had to click on the double arrow to manually expand the menu. If you want the menu to expand automatically, follow these simple steps.

First, select View, Toolbars, Customize. In the Customize dialog box, click the Options tab. Under Personalized Menus And Toolbars, find the option Show Full Menus After Short Delay. If your menus didn't automatically expand, this option won't be selected. Select it. (Of course, if for some reason you don't want this option to be turned on and it is, you can just deselect it.) Click the Close button to implement your change.

USE WINDOW MENU TO SWITCH BETWEEN OPEN PAGES

When you're working on a web in FrontPage, chances are you'll be working on several pages at the same time--or at least have them all open. When you need to switch between pages, double-clicking on each file in the Folder List can get tedious. Well, you may be happy to learn there's a quicker way.

You can use the Window menu to switch between open pages, as you can with any Microsoft application. Simply click on the Window menu and select the open page you wish to jump to. Now that's much better.

PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE

Message boards provide the structure that simple online guest books lack. Most of the messages that people post on message boards tend to be fairly short, but unlike in a guest book, messages aren't just listed in a simple top-down or bottom-up order that's based on when they're posted. Instead, a message board lists its postings by topic. In fact, the whole intent of a message board is different from a guest book's: Both guest books and message boards let people leave messages, but message boards also enable people to interact with one another.

FRONTPAGE 2000 MIRRORS MICROSOFT WORD 2000

If you looked at FrontPage 2000 and then turned your head away really quickly, you might think for a moment that you'd just encountered a copy of Microsoft Word 2000, right down to the menus and toolbars. Tis not a mirage. Microsoft's idea is to provide a familiar and integrated approach to Office 2000's various product interfaces, which helps you, the Web builder, have an easier time getting a handle on using the products.

GOING MONOCHROME

Like that old-time black-and-white look? Well, if you have a color photo on your page, it's easy enough to turn it black and white. First, click once on the photo in question to select it. Now, look at the picture toolbar at the bottom of your screen. The icon you're looking for has two triangles that, when fit together, would make a square. You'll know you've found the right one because the words Black and White will pop up when you hold your cursor over the icon. Click once on this magic button, and your photo will instantly change to a black-and-white masterpiece.

MOVIN' ON UP

Designing a Web page and you want to jump to the top of the page in a jiffy? Simply press Ctrl-Home on your keyboard, and your cursor will appear at the top of the page. Alternatively, if you want to jump to the bottom of a page, press the Ctrl-End keys.

THE TREBLE WITH SOME MP3S

Okay, you go through all the necessary hoops to download an MP3 file and it won't work. Don't fret -- it's probably not your fault. Here are a number of good reasons why MP3 downloads can give you a headache, an error message, or both:

Time limits: To prevent swamps of traffic, some Webmasters set their computer servers on timers to go on and off throughout the day. Unfortunately, they don't often post when they're open for business.
Overcrowding: Think of a computer server as a water tap -- it can fill only so many glasses of water at a time. If too many people are trying to download MP3s, the server can overload. When in doubt, try again to connect later.
No free meals: Other Webmasters are stubborn about MP3s; they don't want to give you a free deal unless you give them something in return. This is a popular practice of people dealing in illegal MP3s.
Password problem: Another way MP3 Webmasters try to limit traffic is to require passwords. Make sure you have the required password to access a site.

DON'T PUBLISH CERTAIN FILES

You've learned how to check on a file's Publish status and how to change that status. But you might be thinking, "Hey, all my pages are perfect--why would I need to unpublish any of them?" Well, here's a reason.

If you've got nifty features on your web pages like a guestbook, a hit counter, or a discussion web, you want to make sure they don't get published again after you first publish your web. If you later update your Web pages and publish all your files again, including the pages that contain those elements, you'll be replacing your guestbook, hit counter, and discussion web with blanks. Oops. So make sure those only get published once.

PUBLISH VIA HTTP

The typical way to publish Web pages to a distant server is to send them using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FrontPage also gives you the option of publishing using HTTP. If, that is, your Web server has the FrontPage Server Extensions installed. If it does:

Open File, Publish Web.
In the Publish Web dialog box, type the URL of your server or choose it from the drop-down menu.

Click Publish.

MODIFY THE TITLE OF A FILE

Each page you create has its own title, which is different from its filename. The title is what shows up in page banners, navigation bars, and the title bar (that blue strip with white letters that runs across the top of your screen).

Because the title is fairly visible, you won't want to title your pages something like "Page 1," "Page 2," etc. Your titles should be descriptive and useful, like "Joe's Home Page."

If you've already gone and named your page something boring, it's not too late to change it. In any view except Tasks View, right-click the filename, select Properties from the shortcut menu, and click the General tab. Type the title of the file in the Title box. Then, click OK.

JAVASCRIPT SPECIAL COMMENTS

Users with non-JavaScript-enabled browsers who attempt to load your JavaScript-enabled Web page will be subjected to a frightfully ugly display: your JavaScript source code! (Because browsers can't interpret JavaScript source code, the browsers assume it's text that's meant to be presented on screen.) To keep this from happening (without affecting users running Navigator or Internet Explorer), all you have to do is add special comment characters just below the beginning <SCRIPT> tag and just above the ending <SCRIPT> tag:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

</SCRIPT>

Note that these are special comments; they're neither standard HTML comments (which look like this: <!- ->) nor standard JavaScript comments (which look like this: //).

JAVASCRIPT ESCAPE SEQUENCES

JavaScript uses certain characters, such as apostrophes and quote marks, as signals. If you want to use those characters in your JavaScript code, you must use escape sequences, snippets of code that indicate the signal characters are to be interpreted as themselves, not as signals. You must also use escape sequences to create special characters, such as ampersands.

GOT A LIGHT?

Professional videographers use time (and illumination) for all they're worth. If you have a fair share of time to set up a shot, to properly light it, and to ensure quality of sound, use every moment to ensure quality through preparation, then shoot semi-automatic or totally with manual settings. If you have only a few moments to set up a shot, make sure to position objects in your shot, do all you can for the sound, cross your fingers, and go fully automatic.

PREVENT LINE BREAKS BETWEEN WORDS

Some words are meant to go together, like ham and cheese, or peanut butter and jelly. If you want to keep adjacent words together on the same line rather than breaking onto the next line, you just need to enter a nonbreaking space between the words instead of a normal space.

To create a nonbreaking space, simply hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys as you press the spacebar.

ONE, TWO: A LESSON IN LINE SPACING

Say you're typing away and you press the Enter key when you want to start a new paragraph. And it seems like FrontPage knows exactly what to do: The cursor jumps two lines instead of just one so you can start that new paragraph. But what happens if you're typing poetry onto your web page--or something like that--and you want your cursor to drop down only one line instead of two? Simple. Instead of pressing the Enter key, press Shift-Enter, and your cursor will move down only one line.

CHANGING LINK COLORS

You can change the color of links on a Web page. A Web page can contain three types of links -- unvisited, visited, and active links. You should change the link colors only when necessary, because you may confuse some visitors if you do not use the standard link colors.

CUSTOMIZING LINKS

Automatically generated navigational links have a great advantage, which is also their shortcoming: They apply the same logic to every single page. If you define a link to child pages in your link bar, every page (that has a child page) will have a link to that page. In that sense, link bars cannot be customized for particular pages.

STEERING CLEAR OF LOATHSOME LINKS

Users expect links to be underlined. They expect links to be a certain color (and a certain color only!). They also expect links to sit there on your page, just waiting to be clicked.

Imagine, then, users' surprise when they go to click a link -- and the link disappears! Can you click a link that isn't there? Or is it really there, but just invisible? (Yes, actually.) This effect is so confusing as to be totally vexing; it's tough to beat for pumping up the annoyance factor.

While there is a complicated way to fade your links to white (using JavaScript mouseover events), there's also a simple way, using Cascading Style Sheets. Of course, these style sheets work only in Internet Explorer version 4+ and Netscape version 6+ -- but that ought to catch most of your users, anyway.

This trick assumes that the background color of your page is white and switches the color of any hovered-over link to white. If your background color is a color other than white, change the color in the code.

If you want to not be annoying, don't make things disappear. This trick has the effect of grabbing a hot dog out of a diner's mouth just before he chomps down for a bite. There's no way not to be annoyed by that!

MAKING SURE THE MISSING LINK IS REALLY LOST

If you're offline and trying to follow a link to an online source, you're going to get a rude surprise. All of your links to the World Wide Web will fail unless you're hooked up to the Internet, and FrontPage 2000 will dutifully inform you that a link to the Web is bad -- even though it is, in fact, good. This slip isn't any fault of the program; it's just that FrontPage doesn't get the feedback it expects, so it delivers faulty information. It's a classic case of GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage Out.

LINKING TO A BOOKMARK

Bookmarks are like ballroom dancers: They need a partner to do their thing. Without a hyperlink, a bookmark is as lonely as a wallflower. Linking to bookmarks inside a page helps visitors find their way around long pages that otherwise require lots of scrolling and searching to navigate. You can create a link at the top of the page to bookmarks in the interior of the same page so that visitors can jump around with swift clicks of the mouse. Likewise, you can create a link at the bottom of the page to a bookmark at the top of the page so that visitors don't need to scroll to return to the beginning of the page.

LINKING UP

When it comes to the World Wide Web, links (which connect different files) are everything. Without them, there couldn't be a Web at all. You create links with the A (anchor) element. That element's href (hypertext reference) attribute gives the Web address of the file you want to link to. This address is called a URL, which is short for Uniform Resource Locator. Here's what a link looks like in HTML:

<A href="http://www.markpettersen.com/">content</A>

The part that reads content is where you put words or images that people can click to go to the linked file. This content appears as blue underlined letters if it's a text link and as a blue outlined image if it's an image link.

LINKING IT ALL UP

You know all about links on the Web--after all, they're the best way to navigate. But how do you add them to your own page? Fortunately, FrontPage couldn't make this easier.

If you want to link from text, highlight the text in question. If you want to link from an image, click on the image once to select it. Look at the toolbars at the top of your screen. You're looking for the hyperlink icon: It looks like a globe with a sideways figure-8 in front of it. Click this icon once to open the Create Hyperlink dialog box. If you want to link to a site on the Web, type the address in the URL box. If you want to link to another page on your Web site, find that page and select it. When you've finished either of these tasks, click OK. Presto--your hyperlink is all linked up.

LOADING WEB PAGE GRAPHICS VIA LINKING

When most people think of Web graphics, they think of inline images, that is, graphics that appear as part of a Web page. Graphics are not physically embedded in a Web page, except when they are displayed. All graphics on a page are stored externally as separate files and linked to a particular location in the page. When a browser requests a Web page that contains one or more graphics, it requests all of the linked files as well. These are downloaded to you one at a time; the browser then assembles them for you according to the instructions embedded in the Web page.

CREATING NUMBERED OR BULLETED LISTS

Remember what we said a few tips back about making sure your Web site looks professional? Even if your site is all about your latest family vacation, there's no excuse for it to be boring. So if you have a list of items, make sure it's set off by bullets or numbers. Heck, even a grocery list looks better with bullets.

If the list is already typed into the page, separated by paragraph breaks, simply select the list and click the Bullets button on the Formatting toolbar. If you want your list numbered, click the Numbering button.

If you already have a numbered or bulleted listed and want to add to it, simply press Enter. The next line will start with a number or bullet. To end a list, press Enter twice after typing the last list item.

REMOVE NUMBERS OR BULLETS FROM A LIST

Numbered and bulleted lists can be efficient ways to organize information, but what if you want to get rid of the numbers or bullets? No problem!

In Page Viewselect the Plain Bullets tab, then , select Format, Bullets And Numbering. If bullets are getting the axe, click the box with no bullets. If you're removing numbers, select the Numbers tab and click the box with no numbering. Click OK.

THE DISAPPEARING LIST--PART 1 OF 4

Let's say you have a multilevel list (or an outline), but you want sections of it to be collapsible. In other words, you want your visitors to have some control over that list and be able to make parts of it appear and disappear. First select the section of the list you want to be collapsible. Now right-click and select List Properties. Toward the bottom of the dialog box, you'll see the Enable Collapsible Outlines option. Select that option and click OK. The section of the list you selected is now collapsible.

THE DISAPPEARING LIST--PART 2 OF 4

In our previous tip, you learned how to make a collapsible list, but you're not quite sure how to collapse it. Here are two tips.

Most important, you simply collapse the list by clicking on the level ABOVE the section that's collapsible. As a favor to your visitors, you might want to add some instructions to your site to explain that to them.

Now, you might be testing this and thinking that this tip just doesn't work. It does. But the trick is that you have to view your page in Preview mode in order to see your list do its collapsing stuff. To do so, look at the lower left-hand corner of FrontPage and click the Preview tab. Now go ahead and test it. When you've finished, go back to editing by clicking the Normal tab.

THE DISAPPEARING LIST--PART 3 OF 4

When creating a collapsible list, you also have an option to have the list collapsed when your Web page first opens. To do that, you have to make the whole list collapsible. But that's simple enough: Just highlight the entire list, then right-click and choose List Properties from the context menu. In the List Properties dialog box, select the Initially Collapsed option and click OK.

Tip-in-a-tip: If you've followed all these instructions but you don't see List Properties as an option on the context menu, it could be that your list doesn't have enough levels. Don't worry--you don't have to add anything to the list. Simply select the very first item of the list and try again. It should work just fine.

THE DISAPPEARING LIST--PART 4 OF 4

Here's something to keep in mind when creating collapsible lists: This neat trick works only with Web browsers that support Dynamic HTML. (That's a fancy Web programming language.) And that could be a problem, because that means that it will work only for folks who use such browsers as Internet Explorer 4.0 (and higher) and Netscape Navigator 4.0 (and higher). So all those folks who use older versions of these browsers (or perhaps even other, less popular browsers) might miss out on your nifty collapsing lists. One way around this problem is just to be sure that the list isn't collapsed when viewers come to your page. That way, if they want and are able to collapse the list, they can. However, if they can't collapse it, they'll still be able to read all of the important data in the list.

LIST THIS--PART 1 OF 2

There are two simple kinds of lists that FrontPage will help you create: a bulleted list and a numbered list. To create either type of list, you first need to select the text that you want to have in list format. Now look at the toolbar at the top of FrontPage. You'll see one icon that has a small number one, two, and three listed vertically. If you click this icon, your selected text will become a numbered list. Or if numbers aren't your fancy, you'll find the bullet icon next to the number icon. It has three bullets, one under the next. Click on that icon to create a bulleted list. Voila! The choice is yours.

LIST THIS--PART 2 OF 2

Once you've created a list, you may find that you want to add another item. Easy enough: First place your cursor at the end of the last item on the list. Now press the Enter key on your keyboard. If you have a numbered list, your cursor will appear on the next line, all numbered and ready to go. If you're working with a bulleted list, the next line will have a fresh bullet point; you can start typing after that bullet.

USING MOVIE CLIP SYMBOLS

Movie clips were introduced with Flash 4. A movie clip is like a movie within a movie that you can manipulate by using interactive controls (also called actions, and created with ActionScript). Movie clips are crucial for complex animation and especially interactive animation. A movie clip doesn't take place on the main Timeline. Instead, you can go to the movie clip at any time, play it, and then return to where you left off in the Timeline. You can also attach movie clips to buttons.

With Flash 5, you can give a movie clip custom properties. Right-click (Windows) or Control+Click (Mac) the movie clip in the Library and choose Define Clip Parameters. You can then assign specific values to individual instances of movie clips. Select the instance and choose Window, Panels, Clip Parameters. You can add actions to instances of a movie clip; in Flash 4 you were able to place actions only on frames or in buttons.

LIGHTEN UP IN YOUR MOVIE MAKING

As you film a moving subject, it may move closer to or farther from the camera, and it could move from dark areas into light (or from light into dark). These constant changes confound the little computer chips in your camcorder as it struggles to keep your subject in focus and properly exposed. Inevitably, the camera just can't keep up, resulting in an auto-focus feature that hunts back and forth, with your subjects getting plunged into darkness when a light background suddenly comes into view.

OPTING FOR MULTI- OR MONO- TASKING

FrontPage enables you to open more than one Web site at a time. If you prefer to only work on a single Web site, you may want to close the current Web site before creating or opening another. To do so, choose File, Close Web. If you haven't yet saved changes to the site's pages, the Microsoft FrontPage dialog box appears, prompting you to save each open page; click Yes. The dialog box closes, FrontPage saves the changes, and the window in which the Web site is displayed closes.