About The Tour

About The "Tour"

The power of FrontPage 2003 is in how the product covers the entire process of Web design. Although the different elements of FrontPage are as powerful as their competitive counterparts, the combination of the elements through a simple paradigm is what makes FrontPage so exciting, so powerful, and so easy to use.

Based on the experience of this book's authors, we've found that very few people understand completely how the different FrontPage elements work together. It is also our belief that many don't realize how simple it is to use all the elements in any Web design product no matter what your skill or programming knowledge level.

In this chapter, we are going to take you on a "tour" of FrontPage 2003 and show you how these different elements work together to provide a complete Web design product. We cross reference each part of our tour with the more complete chapters dedicated to these elements and present numerous screenshots that add the visual component to providing a solid understanding of what this product offers to anyone who picks it up.

We recommend that you read this chapter in its entirety, even if you are familiar with previous versions of FrontPage. The new tools provided in this release and a solid understanding of how they all fit together will place you in a position of competitive advantage.

The Elements

All the elements of any Web design program can be found in FrontPage 2003:

  • Creating and Editing Web Content. FrontPage 2003 provides a robust and powerful Web content editor that can be quickly mastered by anyone comfortable in front of a computer. Because the product looks and feels like other products in the Microsoft Office system, millions of users are instantly comfortable and experienced with the interface.

  • Creating Web Sites. You will seldom see a single self-sustaining piece of Web content anywhere on the Internet. The power of the Web is in how everything links to everything else. FrontPage provides a powerful tool for creating and managing Web sites.

  • Advanced Page Design. Where traditionally standard HTML will meet most needs of the Web developer, options for advanced page design are tightly integrated in to FrontPage 2003. Interactive forms and style sheets can quickly be integrated in to your site through FrontPage.

  • Scripting, DHTML, and Dynamic Content. A few years ago, HTML made up the most significant percentage of Web content. This continues to change, and the role of scripting, DHTML, and dynamic content continues to raise in importance and penetration. FrontPage 2003 provides the necessary tools to integrate such content in to your Web product.

  • Coding. Some elements of Web design simply can't be done through a WYSIWYG interface. The new coding tools integrated in to FrontPage 2003 make it a powerful tool for coding Web site content.

  • Collaboration. Web design is seldom ever a solitary job. In most Web design projects, teams work together to develop the final product. The collaboration tools offered by FrontPage 2003 make this process considerably easier and provides a platform for collaboration that, when leveraged correctly, can assist the design process considerably.

  • Data. Web sites and content no longer come solely from static sources of data and information. Data comes from sources as varied as a database to dynamically generation XML streams. The tools for integration with multiple data sources are provided with FrontPage 2003.

  • Office Integration. The market penetration and impact of the Microsoft Office System is undeniable. Knowledge workers around the world use Office to generate considerable amounts of content, and FrontPage integrates tightly with all elements of Office to port the content from other Office products to a Web friendly presentation.

  • FrontPage and Web Graphics. FrontPage 2003 provides a basic set of tools for managing and integrating Web graphics but also works well with popular graphic design products.

  • Integrating FrontPage with Other Systems and Products. As powerful as FrontPage is, it would be downright silly to claim that it is the only product you will ever need when designing a Web site. The more complex any Web product becomes, the better the chance that you will need to integrate or use a third-party product. FrontPage integrates closely with many third-party products and server systems to provide the needed power when FrontPage doesn't provide it.

The Interface

Web design doesn't have to be a complicated effort. Many companies and products have made the process of building Web content considerably more complex than it needs to be. You can see this in popular Internet design products that have complicated interfaces and terminology either all their own or industry specific.

Because FrontPage 2003 comes from Microsoft, it utilizes the Office and Windows interface and paradigms understood by anyone using the Office products. As a result, considerable elements of the product don't need to be learned.

The Office Interface

As seen in Figure 2.1, the basic Design view of FrontPage looks almost identical to other Office products and most Windows programs. Not only are these elements provided to enable most users the chance to quickly jump in and work on the product, but also they use the exact same code as seen in the other Microsoft Office products in most cases.

Figure 2.1. The blank FrontPage design screen resembles a blank Microsoft Word 2003 screen and offers the same interface for quickly entering and modifying content.

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In short, if you are familiar with the interface of any other Office product, you are familiar with the FrontPage 2003 interface.

The Windows Interface

When FrontPage doesn't mimic the Office interface, it often mimics the Windows interface. As seen in Figure 2.2, the Folders view in FrontPage 2003 looks a lot like Windows Explorer and offers the user the chance to navigate (and manage) site content through the same toolset he uses to navigate (and manage) his hard drive or corporate network.

Figure 2.2. The FrontPage 2003 Folders view mimics closely many elements of Windows Explorer allowing another familiar interface.

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In addition to the familiar Folders view, FrontPage 2003 takes many other elements of Windows into consideration when assisting in the Web design process. Elements as standard as Find and Replace are part of FrontPage. Sites can be sent to your Web server as easily and as quickly as you send a Word document to your printer, as seen in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3. The File menu in FrontPage 2003 offers a Publish Site option in addition to the Print option.

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NOTE

If you are familiar and comfortable with Web publishing concepts and terminology and will always prefer FTPing to publishing, don't worry. FrontPage 2003 provides for all the Internet standards but also provides a Windows interface and paradigm because it is considerably less complicated and enables a considerably larger audience the ability to make use of the tool.


You can drag and drop files between folders in the Folders view. If you move content linked elsewhere in the site, FrontPage will rewrite the HTML to prevent broken files.

TIP

Make sure that you understand the power of site organization through drag and drop. A site with thousands of pieces of content can quickly be organized with FrontPage instantly editing the appropriate HTML that most coders would take weeks to clean up.




Special Edition Using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
Special Edition Using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
ISBN: 0789729547
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 443

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