Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003

Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003

Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 is the Web site creation and management program that gives you the features that help you to build more powerful Web sites.

Designing your Web site

FrontPage 2003 provides an enhanced design environment, new layout and design tools, templates, and improved themes - all created to help you realize your Web site vision without any knowledge of HTML.

• Larger design area Create Web sites in a larger work area that reduces the need to scroll and makes site design easier. FrontPage now uses task panes to centralize all of the Web design features and provides a Web Site tab for managing your site. The Views bar in previous versions is replaced with the Web Site tab and a much smaller set of tabs that appear below the main editing window. FrontPage also added new toolbars and task panes.

• Themes Apply themes that use cascading style sheets rather than HTML, making to make your files smaller, more transparent, and easier to maintain and modify. Pages with HTML themes applied in previous versions retain their settings in FrontPage 2003.

• Dynamic Web Templates Attach a Dynamic Web Template to a set of pages that you want to share the same layout. Protect that layout by specifying which page regions are available to coauthors for editing.

• Graphics support Import images into your Web site using new intuitive user interfaces in FrontPage that enable you to edit images with ease. You have more control over how images are displayed and saved.

• Tracing image Create a mock-up image of a Web page in a graphics program and then use it as a visual guide to create or trace the Web page design in FrontPage. Show or hide the image, set its opacity, and change its position.

• Interactive Buttons Add professional-looking buttons to your Web page by selecting them from a list. Choose the font and button color, define a link, and then set the image and text settings for original, hover, and pressed states.

• Layers Use layers to position content anywhere on your Web page. You can overlap, nest, and show or hide layers on a page. Layers can contain HTML elements, such as text and graphics.

• Support for Macromedia Flash Enhance and update your FrontPage Web site by adding Macromedia Flash-based content - including movies, audio-enhanced animations, and previously recorded presentations or courses. Set options for automatic playback, such as playing a short animation one time when the site visitor first loads the page or looping the content to play continuously.

• Page rulers and layout grid Precision design and placement is a snap with helpful positioning guides, such as page rulers and the background layout grid. Customize the rulers or the grid by choosing a unit of measurement, line styles and colors, and spacing options.

• Layout tables and cells Create a framework for Web page content by using layout tables and cells. Automatically create professional graphic effects, such as rounded corners and shadows. Layout cells can contain text, images, Web Parts, Macromedia Flash-based content, and other elements.

• Behaviors Quickly add interactivity or increased functionality to text, images, or other Web page elements by using scripting-based Behaviors. For example, you can add a Behavior to an image so that when a site visitor moves the pointer over it, a different image appears. You can also view and edit the scripts associated with an element by viewing a list in the Behaviors task pane.

Developing your Web site

FrontPage 2003 provides an enhanced authoring environment, new graphic features, clean HTML, and more control over the code. In addition, its powerful coding tools help you to apply and increase your knowledge of various coding languages and to create interactive scripts.

• Split view Review and edit Web page content in a split-screen format that offers you simultaneous access to the Code and Design views.

• Quick Tag tools Use the Quick Tag Selector to select any tag in your Web page. Use the Quick Tag Editor to insert, wrap, and edit HTML tags.

• Typing aids Speed up the code-writing process by using word-wrap, line numbers, automatic indentation, tag completion, bookmarks, and advanced code selection.

• Code snippets Reuse fragments of code that contain one or more lines of HTML or other code. Use the predefined code snippets or create and save your own.

• ASP.NET controls Develop Web programs and Web services by using ASP.NET, a set of technologies in the Microsoft .NET Framework. Preview, reposition, and resize ASP.NET controls. IntelliSense support for scripting helps you to hook up, tailor, or even create new ASP.NET intrinsic controls.

• Editing non-HTML files Edit file types other than HTML directly in FrontPage. Open and edit text files (files with a .txt file name extension), XML files, XSLTs, and files that contain ECMAScript as defined by the specification of the European Computer Manufacturers Association - such as Microsoft JScript or JavaScript (files with a .js file name extension). Text files are formatted as plain text; script files, XML files, and XSLT files are displayed with code formatting applied. When you edit XML and XSLT files, the XML View toolbar provides additional options for formatting code.

• IntelliSense Reduce errors in your code by using Microsoft IntelliSense® technology in Code view. IntelliSense includes statement completion and shows the parameters available for the code you're writing, just as you would see in Microsoft Visual Studio. IntelliSense is available for HTML, Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), ASP.NET, Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), and ECMAScript as defined by the specification of the European Computer Manufacturers Association - such as Microsoft JScript or JavaScript.

Developing a data-driven Web site

FrontPage 2003 enables your Web site to connect with people and information in new ways. Use Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to connect to, edit, and present live data from a variety of data sources - including Windows SharePoint Services data, XML, Web services, and OLE DB data sources - to build rich, interactive data-driven Web sites in a WYSIWYG editor.

• Web packages Package a portion of your Web site based on Windows SharePoint Services into a module that others can add to their sites. Web packages are cabinet files (with .fwp file name extensions) that can contain Web pages, templates, Web components, themes, graphics, style sheets, and other elements. FrontPage ensures that all dependent files are included in the Web package, so the deployed package works seamlessly on new Web sites.

• Data Source catalog Use the catalog to access data sources that are already part of your Web site - such as Windows SharePoint Services lists or XML files - as well as external data sources, such as OLE DB data sources and Web services or URLs that return XML.

• Data View Details View the data structure of a data source and walk through individual records by using the Data View Details task pane. Preview the structure and contents of a data source before adding a Data View to a page.

• Web Part pages and zones Create sophisticated master-detail data views by adding and connecting Web Parts. Changes to data or formatting in one Web Part can be reflected in others, providing site visitors with an interactive experience.

• Data View Web Part Author Data Views on live data by using the Data View Web Part. Data Views are transparent in both Design and Code views, and you can format them by using the standard formatting tools. When you format data in a Data View, FrontPage 2003 creates an Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) file to apply that formatting to your page. The XSLT is presented inline in the HTML of your page, and you can edit it in Code view or Split view.

• Customized Data Views Change the overall look of data - either by manually formatting the data or by applying a prebuilt Data View style. You can apply additional manual formatting after you specify the style.

• XML support Use Extensible Markup Language (XML) to complement, rather than replace, your use of HTML. View or edit files, apply standard formatting to the structure of code in XML files, view the XML structure, and create custom displays of XML data on Web pages. For example, you can use FrontPage 2003 to create a Web page that displays data from an XML file, and then you can apply filtering, sorting, and conditional formatting to display the data the way you want.

Publishing your Web site

FrontPage 2003 contains a new publishing user interface, the Remote Web Site view. Using Remote Web Site view, you can publish files and folders to any location on a file system, between local and remote Web sites, an extended server, an FTP or WebDAV server, or you can synchronize a remote Web site with a local Web site.

• Remote Web Site view Display the files in both the local Web site and the remote Web site by using Remote Web Site view. Icons and descriptive text indicate the status of your files and folders, and the synchronization feature helps ensure that you don't overwrite any files or folders accidentally.

• Publishing to any location Publish entire Web sites and individual files and folders to any location - an extended Web server, a Web server that supports the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), or a location in your file system.

• Site-building tools for FTP and WebDAV servers Work with others by using the new FrontPage site-building tools. WebDAV file locking is provided on WebDAV servers. On FTP servers, file locking is supported through the use of .lck files. These files are fully compatible with those used by Macromedia Dreamweaver, so you can work with Dreamweaver users on an FTP server without accidentally overwriting each other's changes.

• Connecting to remote Web sites Specify connection settings and manage connection types and protocols - including Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or passive FTP - by using the Remote Web Site Properties dialog box.

Maintaining your Web site

FrontPage 2003 offers new compatibility and HTML tools to help you maintain your site.

• Browser and resolution reconciliation Target specific browsers or resolutions, or see how your site will look in various combinations of browsers and resolutions - including simultaneous preview your Web site in multiple browsers.

• Smart find and replace Quickly and accurately search and replace attributes or tags across an entire Web site or on specific pages. Save queries for later use, and share them with other authors. FrontPage includes basic find and replace functionality, as well as a rules engine for HTML searches.

• Optimized HTML Generate clean HTML code in files and folders either in your local Web site or when you publish pages to your remote Web site. Reduce the size of a page by removing empty tags, white space, redundant tags, unused and empty style definitions, and even certain tags that you specify.

• Accessibility checking Use the Accessibility Checker to select the guidelines (including U.S. government Section 508 guidelines) you want to follow in your Web site. Suggestions to improve accessibility are shown in a list, and you can jump back and forth between that list and your site to address the issues.