The Missing Credits

About the Author

About the Creative Team

Acknowledgements

The Missing Manual Series

Acknowledgements

Heaps of gratitude to Peter Meyers, whose edits and guidance have improved this book enormously. Additional credit goes to Kathleen Anderson and Chris Leeds for sharing their expertise so generously. Thanks too to my agent, Lynn Palmer, to Sarah Milstein, and to Gus for his steadfast companionship throughout this project. A lifetime of appreciation goes to my mom and dad for making everything possible. Special thanks to Dani for making it a joy.

Introduction

These days, almost everybody's got a Web sitefrom your local sewing circle to the world's largest corporations. So, why not you? Maybe you're finally ready to put up that family Web site or get your shop online. Or perhaps it's just time the world knew more about your pet llama collection. Whatever the reason, FrontPage 2003 has everything you need to join the crowd . The program is ready to help a little, or a lotwhichever you please .

If you're the kind of person who likes everything done lickety-split, with a minimum of technical fussing, FrontPage is your dream come true. Answer a few questions, and FrontPage will create your entire Web site for you. (Really.) If you're not ready to cede quite that much control, you can ask the program to handle only those jobs you don't care to do yourself. For example, FrontPage can help the design-challenged add an eye-pleasingly coordinated set of colors, fonts, and buttons throughout your site.

On the other hand, maybe you're a do-it-yourself type with very specific ideas about what should go into your site and how everything should look. If that's the case, FrontPage's cookie- cutter solutions probably aren't flexible enough to suit you. In fact, the program's reputation for automating everything may even disturb you a bit. Don't worry. You can bypass the canned options and create a completely custom site. The latest release of FrontPage includes new features that make it easy to create a site from scratch. In short: if you're a Web purist, the program is now better than ever at getting out of your way.

The main goal of this book is to lay out all your options clearly. Once you know what FrontPage 2003 has to offer, you can decide which tools are right for you.

Part I: Creating a Basic Web Page

Chapter 1: Building a Basic Web Site

Chapter 2: Working with Text

Chapter 3: Hyperlinks

Chapter 4: Working with Images

Chapter 1. Building a Basic Web Site

Many Web design graybeards consider their ability to write HTML code by hand a badge of honor . But for someone who's new to the Web, this approach is pretty over the top. Just because you'd like to post your party photos doesn't mean you want to become a programmer. Novices aren't the only ones who need a hand. Pretty much every Web developer has popped a page into a visual Web editor like FrontPage at some point.

People use FrontPage and similar programs because they make the creation of Web pages fast and easy. Advantages of using FrontPage include:

Hands-on editing . Of all the benefits FrontPage offers, nothing beats its ability to let you see the changes to your Web page as you make them. While you're working, you pretty much see pages as visitors to your site eventually will. You add and edit visual elementslike images and hyperlink buttonsby clicking on them directly. When you move or resize an object, the results show immediately.
Speed . Tasks that are extremely tedious when coding manually, like creating a table, are a snap in a program like FrontPage. In fact, many professionals who write their pages by hand often hop into programs like FrontPage just to add a table. In the process, they save themselves tons of typing.
Visual aids . FrontPage provides diagrams to help manage even the abstract aspects of your site, like hierarchy and site navigation. An illustration can be a big help when you're having trouble organizing pages.
Guidance . FrontPage menus and toolbars provide direction that's lacking in an all-text HTML world. For instance, even if you don't know exactly how to do something, like format a table border, you can most likely figure it out by searching through menus called Format or Table to find the right command.

This chapter introduces you to the FrontPage workspace. After a look around, you'll take a turn at the wheel, using FrontPage to create a simple Web site. Along the way, you'll get to know FrontPage's controls and windows and catch a glimpse of what the program makes possible.