Microsoft FrontPage 2002

FrontPage is another frequently used program and it is a must have piece of software that a number of people tend to regularly use to update their homepages, or sometimes to design full blown sites.. Any improvements to make me work more efficiently are greatly appreciated and thank god, FrontPage 2002 is full of new features. Microsoft once again doesn’t disappoint us since the program was totally rethought once again. As a reminder for those who forgot, originally Microsoft didn’t make FrontPage. When Microsoft in 1996 felt that the Internet became unavoidable they bought this website editing software from another company.

Since then there were many FrontPage versions each one better than the previous and changing the way you’re working with websites to provide more efficient solutions. Versions 95 & 97 of FrontPage were slow and not user-friendly, with FrontPage 98 Microsoft started to show improvements. Then came Microsoft FrontPage 2000, which was probably the most accomplished version of the software by respecting and treating correctly HTML code to avoid any compatibility worries. FrontPage 2002 is a new exciting challenge for the Microsoft FrontPage development team, which they raised successfully.

So lets see what Microsoft has done to improve an already great program. The first major enhancement of FrontPage 2002 you instantly notice is that you can open several pages in the same window thanks to the new tab feature: using the tab you can easily switch from a page to another, staying in the same window! A real revolution compared to FrontPage 2000.

Sure, for each page you display you can enable three different views:  

• The design one is the place where you create your page from the scratch. You can use one of the predefined templates if you’re not really inspired or build your own one very easily just like if you were working with Publisher. Indeed the major advantage of FrontPage is its WYSIWYG design environment. With other web editing tools you may not get the result you were expecting when you designed the page. Here people that hate HTML code don’t even have to worry about it since they create web pages as easily as typing a letter in Word and the result they get in their browser is exactly represents what they have designed.
• The HTML view is for pros only. Anyway thanks to that French scientist (cocorico) of the CNRS that created this language… Indeed instead of making a complex language the one he created ‘HTML’ (hyper text markup language) is really easy to learn and to understand and don’t require too much or practice. Obviously the HTML editor uses color codes to highlight portions of code and let you quickly identify which part is used for.
• Finally the design view of FrontPage 2002 lets you view the page you’ve created exactly as it’ll be shown by your browser.

Building a website becomes as easy as constructing Legos with FrontPage 2002. Indeed Microsoft FrontPage 2002 gives you the power to add dynamic content with the new Photo Gallery component, cross-browser enhanced Drawing Tools, and Automatic Web Content from Microsoft MSN®, MSNBC, Expedia, and bCentral. Users can save time and achieve professional-looking results by using sophisticated technology such as fully customizable Themes, customized lists, and quick-to-build surveys without having to know or spend time on complex programming. In addition to that all the DHTML and other banner effects remain always easy to apply in order to create high technology websites. Many other new features are included in FrontPage 2002 like:

• Photo Gallery - Users can quickly and easily create a Photo Gallery to display photos or images. They can add images to the Photo Gallery, select from several different customizable layouts, add captions and descriptions to images, reorder images, change image sizes, and switch layouts.

• Enhanced Drawing Tools - Enhanced drawing tools such as auto-shapes, drop shadows, Word Art, and text boxes are as easy to use because they are in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. This also means that users can easily paste any shapes they have created in other Office applications directly into FrontPage.

• Automatic Web Content - Users can add Automatic Web Content to their Web site by inserting MSNBC headlines and weather forecasts, MSN search, Expedia maps, and bCentral small business tools. Inserted content is updated daily by the respective sources, so users can have continuously updated content without having to continually update their site.

• Insert Browser-Editable Lists - Users can insert lists, via Microsoft SharePoint technology, that they have created from scratch or selected from a variety of list templates such as Announcements, Events, Tasks, and Contacts. Authorized users can easily edit, customize, and subscribe to these lists from level 4 or later browsers, and these lists can be exported to key Office 10 applications.

• Insert Discussion Boards - Users can insert a Discussion Board, making it easy for team members and visitors to the Web site to participate in newsgroup-style threaded discussions. Users decide who can see the discussions and who can contribute to them. This functionality is made possible through Microsoft SharePoint technology.

• Insert Dynamic Online Surveys - This feature enables users to create and insert dynamic Online Surveys, complete with easy-to-add radio buttons, drop-down menus, and check boxes. Visitors can respond to surveys from their browsers and can choose to see results in automatic graphs. Users can simplify their survey creation with template choices, or create surveys quickly with the Survey Wizard. Dynamic Online Surveys are made possible through Microsoft SharePoint technology.

• Theme - Users can apply a virtually limitless variety of formatting options with 67 customizable Themes. Each of the Themes have been updated in FrontPage 2002 and each has its own look and feel, including coordinated bullets, buttons, background, page banner, horizontal line, and font styles. Users can apply a Theme across a single page or all pages in their site. Themes can be also applied to Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft SharePoint based Web sites.

• Border Drop-down Tool Button - Border Drop-down Tool Button enables users to add borders of any color or background color to text or graphics quickly and conveniently. This makes adding borders in FrontPage as easy as it is in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, and there is no need to put the text or graphics into tables.

• Page Tabs - Page Tabs make editing many pages at once easier. Users can open several pages in FrontPage and switch from page to page with just a click on the tab that represents that page.

• Navigation Pane - Users can access the Folder List and Navigation Pane from the main FrontPage. This enables them to continue to edit pages while alternating between managing files and folders to manage the way the pages link to each other.

• Table Editing: Table AutoFormat, Table Fill, and Table Split - Table AutoFormat provides a fast and easy way to create professional-looking tables. Users can select the style they want to use, and FrontPage automatically changes the table’s borders, shading, and colors.

With the new Table Fill, users can quickly repeat the contents of an individual cell to the right of the cell (Fill Right) or below the cell (Fill Down). This saves time when users want to copy the same content to multiple cells.

Table Split enables users to divide a table at any location quickly and easily. This is convenient when users want to add text or graphics in between rows in a table.

• Task Pane - The Task Pane enables users to have easy access to frequently used commands such as New Page or Web, Web Site Templates, Insert Clip Art, Search, and Office Clipboard.
   

• Office Clip Board - Office Clip Board helps users copy or cut content from Office applications and quickly paste them into Web pages they are creating with FrontPage. Users can visually see representations of the content on the clipboard in the Task Pane, and they have the option of preserving the source or destination text, formatting, or pasting only the text without the formatting.
   

• Link Bars - Users can build Custom Link Bars to link to pages on or off their site. They can create Link Bars via the Navigation View to be applied site-wide, or create ad-hoc Link Bars to apply them anywhere they want in their Web. Users can place Link Bars in shared borders for site-wide navigation, or they can insert them anywhere on any page in their Web.

Users can also use the Link Bars as “back” and “next” links to chain their Web pages together in sequence, or they can include only one link to make a quick button. Users can even insert Link Bars into pages on their site with Microsoft Word 10. 

• Web Components - FrontPage Web Components such as hit counter, banner ad manager, marquees, hover buttons, link bars, and Web-wide search make inserting sophisticated technology into Web sites fast and easy. New components in FrontPage 2002 include Photo Gallery, Link Bars, Top 10 Lists, List Views from Microsoft SharePoint, Save to Database, and Automatic Web Content such as headline news and maps.
   

• Inline Frames via HTML 4 based Support - FrontPage 2002 offers support for features enabled by advanced technology such as HTML 4, including Inline Frames, language attributes, and button and fieldsets in forms.

Frontpage also has new tools in there for people that run the website making a daunting task like that a lot easier: 

• Usage Analysis - Usage Analysis Reports can help users better understand who visits their site. This feature enables users to quickly find what pages are getting the most hits and how customers find their site with referring URLs in daily, weekly, or monthly reports. These reports can be exported to HTML or Microsoft Excel and can be filtered and charted to show the exact information users want.
   

• Top 10 Lists - Users can quickly insert Top 10 Lists that link to the Top 10 pages on their site. The Top 10 pages can be determined by the number page hits, referring domains, referring URLs, search strings, visiting users, and more. These lists are automatically refreshed when the user comes to the page. This feature can be used on Internet or intranet sites.
   

• Enhanced Reporting - With FrontPage 2002 Enhanced Reports, you can monitor your site’s performance by quickly finding slow or unlinked files or pages and broken hyperlinks. You can also auto filter the reports and export the data to HTML or to Microsoft Excel.

Also control on how your HTML code looks has not been forgotten:

• Paste the Way You Want - When users paste content into their FrontPage-based Web site from other applications, they can now decide whether they want to preserve the formatting from the document they copied (Keep Source Formatting) or let the page’s Theme or style change the formatting (Use Destination Styles), or strip out all of the formatting and simply paste in the text (Keep Text Only).

Microsoft didn’t forget programmers! FrontPage 2002 includes many new features to ease their life. For XML lovers the new Apply XML Formatting Rule automatically takes an HTML page and reformats its HTML tags to make them XML-compliant: great! In order to produce homogeneous pages if on a site you can use the new HTML Reformatting feature that enables the user to tell FrontPage how their HTML page should be formatted—from how many indents should come before each tag to whether or not to use optional tags. New in FrontPage 2002 is the ability to take a page that has been imported into a Web and reformat the page according to the user’s preferences. Finally a very important feature is the new Active Server Page (ASP) Source Code Preservation that let users to edit content in pages containing ASP code without disturbing the ASP code. Now, FrontPage 2002 always opens the ASP page in Normal View mode, regardless of whether the ASP code violates convention (such as multiple <head>, or <body> tags). 

Also added into Frontpage is Microsoft Sharepoint. Microsoft SharePoint technology enables custom Web pages and collaboration capabilities to be truly accessible to whole teams or organizations. It is possible to edit Microsoft SharePoint sites straight from a browser, making it simple and accessible for everyone to participate in discussions, surveys, announcements, and more. For more information see the Microsoft SharePoint Product Guide.

In addition, FrontPage 2002 has not only increased the number of available languages to 26, but has also added Unicode Support that enables users to alternate between supported languages while they create and edit Web sites. This international support enables users to work in the appropriate languages with team members who are all over the world.

Sharepoint also increases communication and collaboration:

• Microsoft SharePoint - Microsoft SharePoint enables users to quickly set up a team Web site for the intranet or Internet. This enables the team to store, find, and share information, documents, and Web pages.

• Browser-Based Editing of Microsoft SharePoint-Based Sites - Users can edit Microsoft SharePoint content, upload documents, and participate in threaded discussions directly from the browser. All team members can contribute and interact with the Web site using the tools they prefer, and they can even receive automatic notification when pages or discussions are modified.

• Discussions and Subscriptions - With Discussions, users can post and reply to comments on pages on their site or on any Web page on the Internet. They can also sign up to receive an e-mail notification when discussions have changed or when pages on their site have changed.

• Customization and Integration with FrontPage - With FrontPage, users can customize their Microsoft SharePoint team Web sites. Users can create and apply custom Themes; insert graphics, Link Bars, and Automatic Web Content; and insert lists such as Announcements, Events, Contacts, Surveys, and Links on their Web site for all to view and contribute.

• Document Library - Users can add a Document Library that lets them store documents in one location for everyone (or only specific people) to access. Users can create a new document for the Document Library from a specified template or upload existing documents to the Document Library. They can also sort and filter the lists of documents in the Document Libraries as well as update or contribute new information to the Document Library from any level 4 or later browser.

Another feature added is E-Commerce Functionality:

• bCentral Commerce Manager Add-in for FrontPage - Users can now easily add e-commerce functionality to their FrontPage-based site via bCentral’s Commerce Manager service. The Commerce Manager service and the Commerce Manager Add-in for FrontPage allow users to quickly build a catalog of items to sell online. Users can subscribe to the Microsoft bCentral Commerce Manager service and then easily insert “buy” buttons and a shopping cart into their Web site.

• Auctions via bCentral Commerce Manager - Once users subscribe to the bCentral Commerce Manager service, they can take their e-commerce functionality one step further by promoting their products across Internet auction sites like MSN eShop Auctions and Fair Market Auctions with an optional upgrade package. Users can access this functionality via the bCentral Commerce Manager Add-in for FrontPage.

• Database Interface Wizard - Users can display the contents of a database on their page by using the Database Interface Wizard. This Wizard comprehensively generates the forms and pages needed to create a Web site front-end for data.

Users can allow other, specific users to edit or delete records from the database via a Web page that is created with this wizard, while at the same time allowing everyone who can browse the site to add new records and view existing ones. Additionally, it enables users to filter data more quickly to find what they are looking for.