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FrontPage October 1999 • Vol.5 Issue 10 |
FrontPage 2000 Office's Web Tool Matches The Best In Basic Page Design | ||
Jump to first occurrence of: [FRONTPAGE]  We have an important announcement for users debating which Office 2000 version to purchase and for owners of the Premium edition (the only one that includes FrontPage 2000). FrontPage 2000 is significantly better than its predecessors, and it may be the best Web-site creation software for fledgling Web wizards. FrontPage was already one of the most popular Web authoring tools, and Microsoft updated this release with a broad range of new features that should solidify its position as a leading product for non-professionals. At the same time, Microsoft eliminated some of the most irritating shortcomings of previous generations of the product.  Meet FrontPage. Just in case you're unfamiliar with FrontPage, we'll take a moment to explain the program before covering its new features. FrontPage 2000, like its predecessors, is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Web-editing tool. WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzy wig") is techno-speak for a program that lets you see what you are creating as you create it. If you change a piece of text from 10-point Times to 14-point Arial in Microsoft Word, for example, you see the change on-screen. Early Web-creation tools lacked WYSIWYG capabilities, requiring users to learn Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the underlying code of Web pages. Using these types of programs, a Web-page author would enter Web-page text into the editor and surround it with the proper HTML tags to instruct browsers how to format it. Rather than placing actual graphics, the author entered code that identified the artwork and its location on the Internet. To view the results, the author usually had to open the page in a separate window, such as a Web browser, and then return to the HTML code area to make changes. This setup lacks convenience, but many advanced designers prefer these bare-bones programs, maintaining they provide more control and fewer problems. That's nice for purists, but for the rest of us, it's handy to see our work in progress. Macromedia's Dreamweaver and FrontPage are the two major contenders among WYSIWYG editors. The powerful Dreamweaver outperformed FrontPage in the past, mainly due to its conversion capabilities. These tools let it import HTML code or other information from another source and, if necessary, return it to that source while losing nothing in between. FrontPage was distinctly lacking in this area, leaving its pages littered with extraneous HTML codes. (If you've seen a Web page with nonsensical text like "H&?<I>," you may have seen the results of poor conversion.) As a result, Dreamweaver has been the editor of choice for Web-design professionals who use WYSIWYG. Web-design forums scattered across the Internet provide a good idea of what these people think of FrontPage: not much. But the fact remains that FrontPage, and particularly FrontPage 2000, is an appropriate option for those who don't aspire to make a living designing Web sites (and even a few who do). It works well with other Office programs (particularly Word and Outlook), is inexpensive (it comes in the Premium edition and costs as little as $99 when purchased as an add-on), and is easy to use. You can use FrontPage to create multipage Web sites and add forms, links, traffic counters, fancy special effects, and more with ease. You also can generate usage reports, collect visitor data, automate tasks, and alter the navigational structure of your site almost as easily. FrontPage offers the less-adventurous user a fine assortment of the templates and wizards for which Office products are famous. Using these, you can have a Web site up and running in minutes, if necessary. Sibling Rivalry. If you have used FrontPage 95 or FrontPage 97, which were very similar in functionality, the latest arrival in the family will amaze you. What was originally a basic Web-design program is now a full-fledged Web publishing and management tool suitable for nearly every Web publishing project. New features, which happen to be some of its most impressive characteristics, include: Ready-to-use but fully customizable themes. With a few mouse-clicks, you can apply one of 60 sets of coordinating design elements and styles, known as Themes, to your Web pages. Options range from the playful colorations of Fiesta to the chrome-and-polished steel of Industrial, and you can alter each to suit your needs. Once you apply a theme to a page, the choices in the Style menu (Heading 1, Bullet 1, etc.) automatically change to reflect the chosen theme. You must apply the styles to your text, but the task is easy and the results impressive. Seamless integration with Office 2000. Prior FrontPage versions had limited integration with Office, but this release makes FrontPage a real member of the suite. The program more closely resembles its family members, plus it integrates options from Excel (spreadsheets and charts), Access (database retrieval, storage, and creation), PhotoDraw (image manipulation), and more. Multiple views. A major user complaint regarding prior versions of FrontPage (and many of its competitors) was the need to toggle between two programs to build pages and manage entire Web sites. FrontPage 2000 integrates these two functions into one display. Cross-functionality among views. FrontPage 2000 offers three page-building views. Normal shows the base WYSIWYG page, HTML shows the HTML code for the page, and Preview displays the actual Web page with all links and other extras in place. Any operations that take place in one view take place in the others simultaneously, and users can switch among views with a mouse-click. In addition, the graphical tools, such as the formatting buttons, are available in the HTML view, as well as in WYSIWYG mode. Conversely, in Normal mode, you can use the Reveal HTML Tags option to view page coding. Enhanced positioning and layering. Many WYSIWYG editors, including earlier FrontPage versions, move text and graphics in fairly large jumps. FrontPage 2000 lets you move items in minute, pixel-by-pixel increments. Automatic formatting. You now can set your preferences to automate such variables as colors, capitalization, and indentation. The Base On Current Page command lets you establish formatting controls based on those of an existing page. Elimination of FrontPage extension requirements. Earlier FrontPage versions required special programming, called server extensions, to be in place before you could publish finished results. This meant not only that your server had to be running these extensions before you could upload your pages, but also that users had to simulate a FrontPage-enabled Web server environment on their own hard drives if they wished to view the actual pages prior to uploading them. FrontPage 2000 eliminates this requirement. You can save, store, and retrieve your Web pages to and from your hard drive without restriction, and you can use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) utility to upload the files to any server, regardless of whether it is running the extensions. (You will need to use a Web server running extensions if you want to take advantage of FrontPage 2000's database integration with Microsoft Access.) Improved HTML code importing. As far as we can tell, Microsoft eliminated FrontPage's poor external code-handling capabilities with the current release.
A Quick Glance. When you open FrontPage 2000, you see a blank screen in the center of the page, with 10 drop-down menu choices (File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Table, Frames, Window, and Help) across the top and a button-style Views section along the left side. The Views section, which is identical to the Views menu, manages Web site elements, such as reports, folders, links, and Web pages, and is unrelated to the Web-editing function. You'll also notice a remarkable array of buttons and toolbars that let you change font sizes, apply styles, save a file, print, format text, and more. You may want to explore these before you expand into the menus, since many of the toolbar features are also in the menus, although they may be nested several levels deep. The blank space you see is your palette for Web page creation. The default is Normal WYSIWYG view. Selectable tab options along the bottom also let you view your page in HTML mode to see the code tags or in Preview mode, which shows exactly how it will appear on-screen. You can start entering text and creating your page right away if you like, but this limits your choices. FrontPage handles frames, subdivisions of Web pages that act independently, like a box with so many smaller boxes inside. To use frames, you must create the box (the frame page) and then create individual pages (the smaller boxes) to nest inside it. So if you plan to use frames, create a frame page first. In addition, the blank slate you see is for a Web page, not a Web site. FrontPage refers to Web sites as Webs, which you should create to hold all your site elements before you get serious about building pages. If you're playing around, the blank slate is a fun place to doodle. If you want to create a useable product, it pays to back up a bit, create a Web and possibly a frames page, and even look at a theme or two. Digging Deeper. Now that we've hit the highlights of this vastly enhanced product, we know you're anxious to dig into the in-depth information provided in upcoming pages. As you do, remember these parting thoughts. FrontPage 2000 is an extremely powerful new addition to the crowded field of entry-level Web-page design programs. The only real drawback we found was that certain features were hard to find. But the homogeneity with other Office products really helped. If you want to build powerful Web sites with compelling graphics, valuable reporting capabilities, and a few extras, you'll be glad you have FrontPage 2000.  by Jennifer Farwell |
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