FrontPage and Web Graphics

Prior to FrontPage 2003, Microsoft tried to position the combination of FrontPage with other Microsoft products as capable of providing the necessary Web graphic and multimedia solutions for Web design. With the introduction of FrontPage 2003 comes a change in strategy.

No specific Microsoft product is available for the purpose of Web graphic design. The Image Composer and PhotoDraw products packaged with previous versions of FrontPage are no longer available to the public, and no products have been introduced to replace them.

FrontPage 2003 now works tightly and easily with other graphic design products and prevents no barrier to working with any standard Web graphic format or product. For example, a tool for inserting Macromedia Flash Movies is built right in to FrontPage 2003.

Part X of this book covers the creation and adaptation of Web graphics for use in a FrontPage Web site. Chapter 46, "Using FrontPage's Tracing Image Feature," gives a detailed examination of the new image tracing tool. The dialog box for the tool is shown in Figure 2.30.

Figure 2.30. The FrontPage 2003 image tracing feature lets you develop a Web site around an image designed specifically to have a site design traced around it.

For more on color concepts and FrontPage 2003, see "Color Concepts and Web Design," p. 825.

For a detailed examination of the different Web graphics formats and how they are handled by FrontPage 2003, see "Web Graphic Formats," p. 847.

For more on the creation of professional Web graphics, see "Creating Professional Web Graphics," p. 865.

For directions on the use of FrontPage's image tracing feature, see "Using FrontPage's Image Tracing Feature," p. 879.

For more on the direct integration of FrontPage with other graphic design tools, see "FrontPage and Graphic Tools," p. 887.