Once you've created your Web page, the next step is to add multimedia files to enhance both the content and the presentation. This can be something as simple as a basic piece of clip art or as complicated as a streaming video file. Multimedia is what makes the Web so exciting. FrontPage 2003 makes it very easy to add multimedia content to your site and provides a considerable library of such content as part of your product purchase. In this chapter, we'll walk through the process of adding graphic and multimedia content to your site and examine the limited toolset for modifying these files within the FrontPage interface. NOTE Microsoft considers photographs, movies, and sounds to all be "clip art." As a result, this content can also be accessed through the Clip Art task pane. All multimedia elements are inserted using the Insert, Picture command as seen in Figure 6.1. Figure 6.1. The Insert, Picture menu item enables the insertion of a lot more than pictures.The Clip Art Collection Included with FrontPageAll products in the Office System come with a significant clip art collection. If chosen during the installation process, the content is usually added to your hard drive for quick and easy access. You can search the collection that came with FrontPage without having to be online. Accessing Clip Art OnlineYour FrontPage license includes the ability to both search and use content from Microsoft's exhaustive clip art library in your Web site. Selecting Microsoft Office Online from the Web Collections option in the Clip Art task pane will automatically search this content for you. Obviously an Internet connection is required to access this content, and you are responsible for any related connection fees. TIP Microsoft's clip art collection is tremendous and sadly underutilized by most customers. Spend some time hunting around this collection, and you'll discover a considerable resource available to you at no extra charge. Microsoft adds new content to its collection on a weekly basis, so make sure to frequent this resource often. Inserting Photo GalleriesPhoto Galleries can be inserted directly in a Web page without the requirement for the Photo Gallery Web component.
For more on the Photo Gallery Web component, see "Using Web Components, Shared Borders, and Link Bars," p. 167. Drawings, AutoShapes, and Word ArtDrawings, AutoShapes, and Word art are legacy tools from previous versions of Office that can all be quickly inserted into a FrontPage Web site the same way they would be placed on a Word document or PowerPoint slide. To use these tools, select the New Drawing option from the Picture option in the Insert menu. |