Microsoft FrontPage 2000
FrontPage has always appealed to novices making tentative forays into the domain of Web designing. And FrontPage 2000 is no different from its predecessors. Even if you are a Microsoft basher, you have to admit that this is one solid Web development tool. It may not be everyoneÆs first choice, but most people will enjoy what this program offers.
FrontPage 2000 provides a comprehensive solution for publishing and managing Web sites. You can now create interesting sites that look and work exactly the way you want. Cutting-edge features like support for DHTML (Dynamic HTML) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) jazz up your pages. For example, you can create a page with text that flies, hops or spirals.
Even more heartening is FrontPageÆs seamless integration with Office 2000. MS Office users can now save HTML documents directly to FrontPage-based sites, while features such as shared Office menus and toolbars smoothen the learning curve. HTML is now on par with proprietary Office file formats like .doc, .xls, .ppt and .mdb. You can create HTML documents that retain the formatting of Office documents as well as different functions such as styles, PivotTable dynamic views, revision marks, OLE objects, document properties and more.
FrontPage 2000 also comes with multi-user and remote authoring and management capabilities. Multiple users can author and add content to FrontPage-based Web sites at the same time, allowing design teams to work together easily. Additionally, it also provides check in/check out functionality so that you can work on a file without worrying about someone else making changes at the same time.
FrontPage 2000 automates routine tasks such as automatically fixing hyperlinks to pages or files when they are renamed, making long documents easier to read and navigate. It can even automatically insert links into pages based on the category they are saved under.
The interface has been refurbished to give this latest version of FrontPage a more user-friendly look. You have personalised menus and toolbras-only items that are frequently used are featured on the menu. Menus expand automatically, based on IntelliSense, to reveal other items. Toolbars are placed intelligently on the screen, based on usage, to reduce unnecessary screen clutter. You can quickly apply formatting from one bit of text to another by placing the cursor on the text with the format you want, clicking the Format Painter button, and highlighting the text you want formatted. Background spellcheck and answer wizards are other innovative additions to FrontPage 2000.
For people with less imagination, the latest version of FrontPage allows you to select from 60 pre-designed themes to customise colours, logos, graphics, background and bullets to enhance the appearance of your site.
Updating Web sites is easy, with new management reports and views. FrontPage 2000 uses a toolbar, like the one in Outlook messaging and collaboration client, on the left side of the screen to help users see their Web sites quickly and easily. This allows you to access the two key areas that earlier used to be located in two different placesùFrontPage Explorer and FrontPage Editor. FrontPage 2000 integrates Explorer and Editor into one, making it easy to manage Web pages and Web sites, and providing easy access to files for dragging and dropping into the pages.
The Folders View closely resembles Windows Explorer, but if files that are linked are renamed or moved, FrontPage automatically fixes the links. With FrontPage 2000, the Navigation View is much more scalable, with the ability to manage thousands of pages. You can zoom into a node on the tree, zoom in and out, and even keep the settings between sessions so that they can return to the same settings later.
Finally, FrontPage 2000 lets you easily incorporate Access databases into Web pages, and add or edit them directly from your browser. There is also a built-in Script Editor that allows you to edit and debug scripts, including JavaScript and VB Script.
When publishing your pages to a Web server, FrontPage 2000 lets you specify which pages to upload. This feature helps you avoid wasting time publishing pages you have not yet finished. You can also filter out the pages you do not need to republish this time around.
To put yourself on the map of the World Wide Web, you need a compelling home page. In the final analysis, no program makes this easier to accomplish than FrontPage 2000. For business users who need a great-looking online storefront or individuals who want to build an attractive personal page, automated wizards make things easy.
The software first walks you through a detailed question-and-answer process. As you design your page, the software pre-populates the fields with dummy text and images.
You can then substitute your own information by cutting and pasting into the template. This simplicity is what makes FrontPage 2000 so successful, and its new features are likely to make it even more so.