Microsoft is the developer behind an excellent software program called FrontPage. It’s relatively easy to use and it offers some nice advanced features. Its a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, which means you see exactly what your Web page will look like in a Web browser. Writing HTML code is not necessary to produce Web pages with FrontPage but it is an option and expands FrontPage’s normal capabilities. Although their retail version offers more “bells and whistles,” the limited version of the software program, titled FrontPage Express (or FPE) offers many of the same features but removes the advanced functionality. And this doesn’t necessarily put you at a disadvantage. Not all of the advanced features work properly with all browsers. You can, however be certain that they’d work with the Internet Explorer browser because Microsoft developed it. But another popular browser, Netscape Communicator does support many DHTML effects from FrontPage, partly because the programming code is almost entirely different from each other between these browsers and many functions behave in different ways.
But to cut right to the chase and get you familiar with the interface, you might be somewhat relived to know that its very much like a word processor’s interface. If you’ve ever used Microsoft Word, you’ll feel very comfortable with FrontPage and construct your pages with ease once familiar with a few more program functions.
If you already have FrontPage or FrontPage Express (the “Express” version is bundled with Internet Explorer version 4 and above), you can start it by going to “My Computer”, your primary hard drive (usually drive “C”) and then “Program Files”. Look through the “Program Files” folder and you should see another folder titled either “Microsoft FrontPage” or “FrontPage Express,” depending on your version. Click on the program icon inside the “Bin” folder. We’ll go over FrontPage Express, simply because its available for free if you need it and its very similar to the retail version. To obtain this component, you will need to download Microsoft Internet Explorer. You can download the latest version free of charge at http://www.microsoft.com/ie. Just follow Microsoft’s prompts for download and installation instructions.
When you have FrontPage running, look at the interface and move your mouse over the buttons. A tag should appear with information in regards to the button’s function. For example moving the cursor over the color palette with the letter “A,” and you’ll get a tag reading “Text Color”. Type some text in the main window and try giving this process a try. After typing, select your text and click that button and you’ll get a dialog box with color options. Simply click on a color and click “Ok” for your text to change color. Later on, you’ll learn how to define your own colors using this palette.
We will assume you have the inverted “P” (paragraph symbol) button selected throughout the upcoming lessons. This allows you to view important format elements. By default, this button should be already selected, but it’s important to double-check to see if this FPE feature is currently active.
We encourage you to experiment with other features to get you more familiar with them in upcoming lessons. Many people learn by doing, and experimenting with different functions will certainly help. Your work will become much more streamlined as your experience builds.