FrontPage Resources AccessFP Services AccessFP Mall Web Resources
Index About Advanced Search Home

FrontPage Express Tips

Do you have a FrontPage Express Tip? Email me now!

Spacing lines of text

Type a sentence and then press the Enter key. Type a second sentence. Note that a space separates the first and second sentence. (see example 1:)

Example 1: One

                 Two

HTML is designed with a block paragraph layout as the default layout. Pressing the Enter key causes FrontPage to write </p><p>, a sequence of tags that ends one paragraph and begins the next paragraph. This is sometime referred to as a hard return and is denoted by the symbol ¶. In this document, the ¶ symbol was obtained by choosing Symbol from the Insert menu in FrontPage Express. Note that within a paragraph the lines are not separated.¶

At the end of the second sentence hold down the shift key and press enter.
Type a third sentence. Note that this time there is no blank space. (see example 2:)

Example 2: One
                 Two

A shift-enter or shift-return is sometimes called a soft return, or, more commonly, a line feed or line break. The symbol for a line feed is sometimes ¬, but in FrontPage the symbol is an arrow shaped like a backwards L and pointing to the left. This symbol is usually invisible unless the ¶ button is pressed on the tool bar at the top of the screen. The HTML tag for a line break is <br>.

Do not construct web pages consisting only of line breaks. In HTML, text with embedded line breaks is taken as a single logical line. This means, for example, text separated by only a line break must have the same HTML formatting. This also means that if there are twelve eight and half by eleven pages worth of text separated by only line breaks, the smallest deletion or editing can result in a long wait for FrontPage to reprocess the document. For FrontPage, and for browsers, that is a sentence twelve pages long. This may also slow down display of pages. Use line breaks only as necessary. Hard returns are preferable.

Tip by FrontPage WorkShop

Buttons on the menu bar

You can use the buttons on the menu bar at the top to format your page faster. To find out what a specific button does, drag the mouse over it and in a few seconds a small box will appear and tell you what the specific command will do.

Estimate page load

At the bottom right corner of the screen there will be a time increment displayed. The increment is the estimated amount of time it will take for a browser to view this page with a 28.8k connection.

Webbots

Please take note of the little robot looking button on the menu bar at the top. This button will let you insert what is known as a WebBot. WebBots are small scripts and programs that Microsoft has created to add functionality to web pages. The only catch is you need to be running Microsoft's web server software with FrontPage extensions activated.

HTML Markup

If you want to insert html go to "Insert" & "HTML Markup" insert your HTML and then press 'ok'. Your html will then be inserted into the page your working on. To view your html at any time go to "View" & "HTML" you can then see what your html looks like. If you want to code and not have an extra code inserted by the editor, code in notepad then copy and paste into "HTML Markup" which will not check your html and will not change it.

Preview your site

Obtain Arachnophilia and when you want to preview your site in as many different browsers as possible before publishing merely:

  1. Save your page
  2. Then go to Start, programs, Arachnophilia. When Arachnophilia. comes up.
  3. Go to File, Open file, Html File.  Click on the down arrow at the top of the box to access the directory where you save your FrontPage Express files. When you arrive at the correct file, select it and press Open. The file then appears as html in Arachnophilia.
  4. Now is  where  you use the preview in browser option of Arachnophilia. Not only can you do this but you have the option to configure up to 6 browsers (see below). The preview menu allows you to activate the selected browser, or quickly switch browsers. The Launch Selected Browser function is duplicated on the toolbar. Launch the browser ( The default browser will be the one you configured at set up with Arachnophilia.) Then you will be able to see your FPE web page in all it's glory:) (Not to mention  you will be able to use Arachnophilia. as a html editor - Arachnophilia. is a Careware program)

    At the bottom of this menu is an option to identify browsers. This is how you add browsers to your Arachnophilia. installation. You may identify up to six browsers. Using multiple browsers is good practice, because no two browsers act exactly the same. You may want to change the coding of your pages to accommodate these differences.

    Arachnophilia. uses a feature of Windows called DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) to switch from the main Arachnophilia. display to the browser display without requiring the user to re-launch the browser each time. Basically, after launching your browser the first time, you may simply press the main toolbar preview button and the browser’s display is updated with the new information. This system works on nearly all browsers -- on one older version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (2.0), because of a coding error, you have to touch the browser’s title bar to refresh the display. For owners of this browser, I recommend an upgrade, free at the time of writing.

Converting documents

Sometimes you might want to make a document that you already have into a html page. To do this follow these steps below:

1    File
2    Open
3    Browse
4    On the down arrow button select the drive your file is in
5    select the folder your file is in and click through the folders till you reach your file
6    Press open
7    Your document appears

Different file formats, like Word, WordPerfect, etc as well as plain text .txt files are supported.

To create a new HTML page from the beginning just start typing on the page.

Store HTML and Other Files in the Same Folder

Later on, you will be sending all your files, (sound, html, image etc) to your web server. When you do you most probably will be sending them to your home directory on the server.

So to make life much easier it would be better if whatever file that you might refer to on a page if you copy or move the file into the same folder that you're using to store your Web page. This way when you specify the file in the image dialog box (or wherever), all you need to do is enter the name of the file and not the drive and folder. Otherwise, you would have to pare down the extra drive and folder information before sending your files to the server.