FrontPage 2002 Tips
Save changes in Navigation view
When you make changes to your web's navigation structure in Navigation view - for example, adding or deleting a page from the structure, or creating a new page - those changes are saved automatically when you switch to another view, such as 'Page View'. However, you can save changes at any time to prevent losing work.
To save changes without switching views, right-click on the view background, and then click 'Apply Changes' on the shortcut menu.
What's in a rename?
If, for any reason, you need to change the name of a file or folder on your Web site, FrontPage will automatically update all the file's associated hyperlinks. You can rename a file in several ways, but it's easiest to follow these steps:
1. In the Folders, All Files, or Navigation View, click the filename to select it and then right click and choose 'rename'.
A box appears around the filename, and the filename is highlighted.
2. Type a new name.
Make sure to keep the same three-letter extension so that the Explorer knows what kind of file you're renaming, though you can change this as well, make sure it is one that FrontPage supports. E.g. .htm .asp etc.
3. Click slightly away from the box. If the file contains associated links, the 'Rename' dialog box appears, asking if you'd like to update the links to reflect the new name.
4. Click Yes.
The dialog box will close and FrontPage automatically updates the links
Jumping the line
When you use code validator's they give you the line number to fix the code, in FrontPage 97/98 you had to cut and paste to notepad with wrap turned off and count down to the correct line number. Now in FrontPage 2000 and 2002 you can go to the line number on the html tab in page view.
Right-click anywhere in the HTML tab,
Then click Go To on the shortcut menu.
Type the number of the line you want to go to in the Enter Line Number box.
Click OK.
How to check your backgrounds are configured and how to configure them.
In Internet Explorer go to.
Tools | Internet Options | Colors | Untick the Use windows colours and choose a colour for the background that no one would use like spruce pink click ok twice and refresh the page to your site you will see what I mean. I use this method to check my own pages you would be surprised at how many 'big' sites don't have theirs configured try looking at http://www.yahoo.com/
To configure your background in FrontPage.
Right click on the background of a page
Choose Page properties
Go to the background tab
Go to 'Colour's' | 'background' and choose your background colour
While you are there change the hyperlink colours from automatic as well to the colour of your choice and the text too. Press Ok.
Remember to use the same link colours throughout your site so you won't confuse visitors.
How to Open your site live and publish from the server to your hard drive
Notes: Make sure you have FrontPage extensions enabled on your host.
Open up FrontPage close down any webs you have open
To Open the site live
File | Open Web | on the pop up box click 'Web Folders' on the left hand menu
Insert the url of the site you wish to open in box marked 'Web Name'
E.g.: http://www.accessfp.net/
Click Open.
A box will appear asking for your username and password insert these press OK.
In FrontPage, click on the navigation view so you know when the site will have finished loading.
The site will load once it is fully loaded you may publish to your hard drive.
File | Publish | insert the location on your hard drive you wish to publish to or make an empty web beforehand in preparation.
When the site has finished publishing close the live site and open the one on your hard drive for editing.
Want to hide a folder/page from the FrontPage search and TOC Bots?
Insert a underscore _ before the folder/page name e.g. _myfile.htm _myfolder/
You may want access to the folder so be sure the hidden folders box is ticked.
(Underscored pages are viewable in the navigation regardless of the hidden folders box being checked.)
Tools | Web settings | Advanced Tab | Make sure the 'Show hidden files and folders' box is ticked. Press ok. You will be asked to refresh the web. Go to the Folders View where you will find your new folder.
Thumbnail button
My thumbnail button was greyed out and I could not get it to work. All I had to do was have a LARGE graphic selected, then the thumbnail button (under tools) becomes active, if your graphic has already been reduced it remains greyed out.
To make a thumbnail.
1 Select the image.
2 On the Pictures toolbar, choose Auto Thumbnail.
FrontPage creates the thumbnail image, inserts it in place of the larger image, and creates a hyperlink to the full-sized image from the thumbnail image.
If you wish to configure page of the larger picture of a thumbnail do this.
1 Select the thumbnail you wish to link from. On the Insert menu, choose hyperlink, or click the hyperlink Icon.
2 Click on "Create a page and link to the new page", (For FrontPage 2000 which is the white page icon on the far right of the Create hyperlink box - For FrontPage 2002 choose 'Create New Document' from the menu on the left of the 'Hyperlink' Dialog Box.
3 A dialog box comes up "New", with Normal page as the default; normally you would use this, so click ok. (For FrontPage 2002, you have the choice of naming the new document. E.g. "myphoto.htm")
4 a) In FrontPage 2002 the file is then saved to your hard drive and you return to the page with the graphic you selected, still highlighted. Again, on the 'Insert' menu, choose hyperlink, or click the hyperlink Icon. Scroll down the list of files till you come to the one you just made i.e. "myphoto.htm" select it then press ok.
b) For FrontPage 2000 you have to save the page and you need to name it. (if you ticked 'Just add web task' when choosing the template (3) the page will asked to be named and saved and then close and you will have to go look in the folders view to open it again.)
5 Open the file "myphoto.htm" (if your using shared borders it is best to delete the shared borders for this page only) and insert your large graphic, you can add text, configure the background, centre the graphic anything you want. Save the page, and when you have published the page you should be able to click on the thumbnail and it will take you to this file.
Getting rid of a background in Themes
If you dislike the background in the theme of your choice you don't have to remake the whole theme, just get rid of the background instead.
1. Right-click anywhere on your page and choose Theme from the pop-up menu that appears.
2. In the Choose Theme dialog box, uncheck the Background Image box. You get a preview of what your page looks like without the background pattern.
3. If you like what you see, click OK. If you don't like what you see, you can always click the Background Image again.
Alt Text Change
1. Right-click the image and choose Image Properties. The 'Image Properties' dialog box appears, (In FrontPage 2000 with the name and size of the image file appearing in the Text box (in the Alternative Representations section).
2. Insert your descriptive text into the Text Box.
3. Click OK.
Close to Word
If you working closely with Microsoft Word, or other Office programs, don't simply drag the text into FrontPage - it carries over the formatting, which is a pain to get rid of. To tidy it up, press Ctrl-space or Ctrl-Shift-Z, or Format | Remove Formatting which removes all previous formatting. You can also paste the content into Notepad first the cut and paste to FrontPage. Alternatively Microsoft has a Add-on that will also do the job.
Easier tables
If you need to display data on a web page, but don't want the hassle of manually typing it into tables, there is an easier way. Simply paste the data (from a spreadsheet, say) into the page select it, then select Table from the Table Menu then "convert text to table", you can do this in reverse as well. "Table" "convert table to text". In the dialog box that appears, specify what delimiting character was used to separate the data (probably a comma, tab, or paragraph mark) and click OK. FrontPage will format the data as an HTML table.
FrontPage "remembers" where the tabs appeared in tab-delimited data-even though HTML doesn't recognize tabs. However, you should convert your text immediately. If you close and reopen the document, FrontPage will "forget" where the tabs were and consider them spaces instead.
Specify fonts
To specify ideal viewing fonts, view the page in HTML. Select the text you want to view and choose the font (such as Arial) then position the cursor to the right of the font name that has just appeared. You add extra fonts simply by typing them in, separated by a comma. Or you can select the text you wish to add extra font's too, then right click choose Font and insert the extra fonts inserting a comma between each, press ok.
Finding the folder
To find a file in the navigation View, Click the file in the folder list and right click choose 'Find in navigation' and the file will be highlighted in the 'Navigation View'.
How to unlink
In FrontPage 2000, select the hyperlink and click the unlink icon. If it is not available go to Tools | Customise in the left hand pane choose Edit and in the right hand pane scroll down till you find unlink. Drag it to the menu bar above.
In FrontPage 2002 select the hyperlink, right click and choose Hyperlink Properties, in the Hyperlink Dialog Box click the 'Remove Link' button. (There is no unlink icon in FrontPage 2002).
Space Saver
When you create blocks or items of text (such as bullet-points with the <LI> tag) and want a new font to highlight your list, use only one <FONT> tag to style the entire list. If you use separate <FONT> tags for each bullet-point, many browsers will add unwanted space between the items.
How to use a hover button within a framed page
By Clicking on a hover button in one frame you can change the contents within another frame. To do this simply add the following code to the list of parameters between the <applet> and </applet> tags.
<param name="target" value=" The name of the frame ">
Clearing your cache
FrontPage 98 stores all its temp files (cache) in its own subdirectory, which is usually stored at
...C:\Program Files\Microsoft FrontPage\temp...
FrontPage 98 does not clear these automatically so sooner rather than later your hard drive will be bulging!
To clear out these temp files
Select Windows Explorer to locate the FrontPage Temp subdirectory
Select and delete all its contents (but don't delete the temp subdirectory itself)
Or you can:
Press Start
Select Find | Find Folders under the Name and Location tab | Named box enter first:
*.tmp - Press 'Find Now' and wait till all the files are located Go to the menu bar and click Edit | Select all. Right click in the window pane on the files under the 'Name' column and select Delete in the pop up menu, click yes when the recycle bin asks if you want to delete them.
*.chk - Do the same with .chk.
FrontPage 2000/02 have a built-in provision for deleting the contents of the temp subdirectory. Tools | Web Settings | Advanced Tab, click the Delete Files button.
Setting White as Default Background Colour for all New Pages
It is very common for web-developer's to overlook turning their page background colour to white because it already appears white in the FrontPage Normal View, when it is actually set to "default" in the Page Properties. If your default background colour is set to white in your browser, you may not catch it when you view your pages, either.
To thwart this in the future, you can modify your "normal page template" in FrontPage to always have white set as the background colour automatically when you create a new page. Here's how to do it.
Open a web in Frontpage:
Press File | New (FP02 - File or web | Page Templates) Normal
Do Not tick "Just Add Task", Click ok
To make background and other changes:
Click Format | Background. Then change the background, fonts and hyperlinks to the colours you wish to choose, you can also change the margins, with this dialog box as well if you wish and also meta tags that you wish to use globally.
Now you are ready to save:
Click | File | Save As (Not Save)
Change the text in the url and title boxes to normal
Click Save as Type
Check the url and title say normal
Click ok.
From now on you will have a blank page with the colours you have set up. For Background that should be white, for text black and for hyperlinks whatever you wish, this depends on how you generally use your pages. If you prefer dark backgrounds choose hyperlink colours that are going to be visible.
Hover buttons not working
If your hover buttons don't work on the Web, chances are good that you didn't upload the Java applet files to your server. There are two files, fphover.class and fphoverx.class, and they must be in a directory called _fpclass within your root web.
However, do NOT put the HTML page that includes the buttons in that directory.
You also need to have server extensions installed.
If you can't see them at first check your hidden folders box is ticked. Tools | Web settings | Advanced Tab | Make sure the 'Show hidden files and folders' box is ticked. Press ok. You will be asked to refresh the web.
