Considerations

Anyone should take a number of considerations into account if they use FrontPage to manage their site navigational structure. On the simple level, there are a number of publishing issues you will want to consider. Things also get a bit more complicated if you are developing your site with others who are using different Web development products. Developers should also make sure to take a long term view of the use of navigational elements and be aware of the product's limitations throughout the design and maintenance of a site.

If everyone in your Web development team isn't using FrontPage, you might want to shy away from using the FrontPage navigational tools. Because the FrontPage navigational tools are FrontPage specific, other products won't recognize them and won't know how to write to, or edit the information. This is true for any product-specific tool on any Web development product.

You also might refrain from the tool if your site doesn't contain enough pages to necessitate any dynamically generated navigational elements. A good chunk of the Web is made up of sites four or five pages in size, and the navigational tools described in this chapter would simply be overkill in such an effort.

Another reason not to use the toolset is if you plan on developing a navigational system of your own. There is no need or reason to use two systems at the same time. FrontPage does not require that you use these tools to build your site; they are only there for your use if desired.

The final reason for not using these tools comes from the desire to maintain a free-flowing site linking strategy that simply can't be managed through FrontPage's toolset.

Issues to Consider When Making Your Own Navigational Structure

There are times when the navigation features provided by FrontPage are more than enough for your need. There will also be times when you'll want to bypass FrontPage and make your own.

First of all, the Navigation options discussed in this chapter are FrontPage specific. As a result, any other development product, from Dreamweaver to Notepad, could easily modify navigation specific content (unintentionally), causing damage to the structure and navigational elements.

As a result, great care should be taken if other development products are used to edit a site with FrontPage navigational options used. In this case, alternative navigation options should also be examined.

The biggest issue worth examining is the time issue. When you create your own navigational structure, you are in charge of every element of the project and won't have FrontPage to do the updating for you. Every change (to navigation and page title) will require you updating your site accordingly. If that time, which can and will add up quickly, is worth the benefits obtained, create your own.

The next section of this chapter, "Alternatives to Using FrontPage Navigation," offers a number of choices.

Publishing Issues

If you use publishing through FrontPage server extensions or always FTP your entire site over whenever a page change is made, this does not concern you and you can jump to the next section.

If you tend to ftp, publish, or synchronize pages as they are built and updated, remember that navigational elements will update pages in your site even without your editing. As a result, every time a navigational or link bar change is made to the site, you will need to publish or synchronize every page affected by this issue not just the new pages added to your site.

Limitations of FrontPage

The FrontPage navigational elements can only map specific files within your Web site taking the title for the page (if any) from the HTML or script file. Any dynamically driven content or multi-function pages can't be mapped appropriately through this interface. In addition, you can't add any scripting or logic to link bars, so no dynamic content can be added to a link bar through the add link option.

NOTE

You can't combine link bars with FrontPage behaviors.

Long Term View

If you build a site with FrontPage Navigation elements, realize that you will always need to utilize the features for the life of the site.

FrontPage's navigation system works great on smaller sites, but once your site pages pass 20 or so, it is pretty hard to contain everything within the FrontPage Navigation option.

In addition, you will quickly find that you will quickly need special navigation options that can be produced through the custom link option. But once FrontPage stops doing the hard work for you, you might want to consider the options discussed in the next section of this chapter.

Speed Issues

The bigger your FrontPage Web site, the more information FrontPage has to keep together and keep in mind. The more FrontPage specific elements added to your site multiplied by the number of pages in your site could result in FrontPage having to track potentially thousands of page changes, navigational bars, and the like.

If your site exceeds a few hundred pages and makes considerable use of FrontPage navigational features, you will find that the design and saving process can slow down as FrontPage attempts to catch up with the work done. Developers with slower machines might find this issue quite frustrating.

One way around this issue is to divide your site into a number of subsites as it increases in size.

NOTE

If you create a site made up of subsites, the only way you'll be able to use links bars to do navigation from one subsite to another is to create custom bars with absolute URLs.

If you change a link in one subsite, FrontPage will not automatically update your custom bars you'll need to do that yourself.

For more on creating subsites from FrontPage sites, see "Opening and Working with Existing Web Sites," p. 283.