E-mail this pageFrontPage Views
Think of FrontPage's interface as a special type of the Windows Explorer you use to manage your files on your desktop computer: it provides both a view of the folders and files on your system, and a mechanism for managing, opening, renaming, and deleting them. In the Folders view of FrontPage, you'll see a list of files and folders laid out for you just as you would in the Windows Explorer. Using the Folders view is strongly recommended. To activate the Folders view, click on the Folders button under the Views caption on the left side of the FrontPage screen.
FrontPage's Views
FrontPage allows a number of views of your website, each having a distinct function and usefulness.
The Page
view offers a split-screen, with the folder list in the left pane and a page view in the right. This is the view in which you'll be doing most of your work as you edit and construct pages. Double-clicking on an HTML file in the Folders
view will load it into the Page
view. Depending upon your system's other installed software and the configuration options you make under Tools|Options|Configure Editors
, FrontPage can be set to load graphics and other web-files in the editor(s) of your choice.
The Folders
view is the most practical one to use when you are creating and managing files on your web site. It presents a view like the one offered in the Windows Explorer
, and lets you view the full range of files and folders on your web site. From this view, you can create new folders (File|New...Folder), new web pages (File|New...Page), and, using the Wizards available under (File|New...Web), entirely new websites. The FrontPage Explorer also allows you to rename files, dynamically updating any of your links referring to the renamed document. The FrontPage Explorer also works in tandem with the Windows Explorer, allowing you to drag (or copy) a file from your hard drive (or floppy disk) directly into your web site.
The Reports
view allows you to view a number of interesting "reports" on your website, including details about how many files it contains, which pages are loading slowly, how recently your pages have been updated, and which files contain broken or inactive links. The Reports
view is one that you won't be using all
of the time, but one that you'd be well-advised to consult at least some
of the time.
Use of the Navigation
view isn't encouraged. While this view is attractive in some regards (offering a largely visual linking mechanism), it doesn't lend itself well to the academic realm in which we work: it imposes a rather inflexible navigation structure on pages, and doesn't always work well in conjunction with the preferred Folders
view. It's generally best to avoid the Navigation
view altogether.
The Hyperlinks
view provides a nice visual representation of how the pages on your web site are linked together. Through the Hyperlinks
view, you are shown links to
and from
any given page on your site. Successful links are shown with an uninterrupted blue line; unsuccessful links (bad links that point to files that don't exist) are shown by a broken line.
Detail from the Hyperlinks view.
FrontPage's Tasks
view is most useful when several people are working together on a common web site. it can be used to apportion various responsibilities to the respective site creators. It provides a nice, quick indication of the work that's still to be done, and can serve as a reminder of web tasks that you need to complete.
HTML Formatting Basics
The default formatting options in HTML are pretty slim, thanks in part to its derivation from SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), a markup language that was more concerned with what the divisions on a page meant than how the divisions on a page would be displayed.
As a consequence, HTML initially comparatively few official formatting tags.
The paragraph (<p>), achieved by pressing the Enter key is, by default, marked off by a blank line.
The line break (<br>), achieved by holding the Shift key and then pressing Enter , inserts the next line of text immediately below the last. This is often more visually appealing and desirable, but it is to be used with caution: for the purposes of sytle definitions and stylesheets, line breaks always adopt the style of the paragraph that they are part of. This means that you might find that a perfectly reasonably looking line break suddenly looks a little absurd when the default styles of a web page are redefined.
Emphasis (<em> or sometimes <i>) marks off text that is conventionally marked in an italic typeface. In the FrontPage Editor, you can add emphasis tags by clicking on the 
button.
The strong tag (<strong> or sometimes <b>) marks off text that is conventionally marked in a bold typeface. In FrontPage, you can add strong tags by clicking on the 
button.
The style menu in FrontPage (
) offers a list of all pre-defined styles available to the document. If a stylesheet has been defined and linked (see Stylesheets
), then the specific style definitions will be used. If no stylesheet exists, the default style definitions will appear on the FrontPage's Style menu. Predefined styles exist for headings (<h1> through <h6>), for "normal" paragraphs (<p>), bulleted lists, numbered lists, definitions, and a few other classifications. Custom styles can be created for user-defined styles and
to redefine the defaults.
Although the formatting toolbar and the format menu in FrontPage (see Toolbars and Basics
) allow the setting of individaul fonts, this practice is not strongly recommended. Ideally, you should set specific font faces and font colors in a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet, see Stylesheets
) definition. Nonetheless, most browsers today accept the font tag (<font face="sans serif" size="2"> and allow parameters such as size and color to be set directly in the page instead of in a stylesheet. You should be careful in selecting a font, though: not all fonts are equally available on all systems. Generally Arial
and Times New Roman
will find good matches globally. Other fonts, if not found on the system being used by your site's visitor, will be replaced by default serif
or sans serif
fonts. Fonts can be set using the dropdown box for fonts in the formatting toolbar or by selecting Format|Font
from the FrontPage Editor's menu. Fonts can be sized by clicking the sizing buttons (
or 
), and can be colored by clicking on the color palette (
).
Numbered lists (
) and bulleted lists (
) always appear at a paragraph's remove from the item that precedes them. This can, in the absence of a user-defined stylesheet, create a somewhat awkward looking layout.
Formatting Documents using FrontPage
As loosely as things are summarized above, that summary takes in the bulk of formatting options that HTML (and the FrontPage) makes available. The only significant formatting mechanism not outlined above is the table, and this is significant enough to warrant its own page . You should find, though, that basic formatting chores, even in the absence of a stylesheet, are relatively easy to perform. The formatting becomes more complex and difficult in a direct relationship to the complexity of your documents. A simple page of text with a few scattered images is fairly easy to manage. A page of text with staggered images, tables, and multiple fonts is a little trickier: practice with some simple pages before attempting something very complex.
Comments or questions? Please contact Dr. Peter Friesen , Instructional Technology Coordinator, Plattsburgh State University.