Who should use FrontPage?
FrontPage is designed for a broad array of users. Our research shows that all types of
customers use FrontPage because it lets them create and manage professional Web sites
easily. For example:
Corporate users use FrontPage to create and manage team, workgroup, departmental,
or company intranets.
Web professionals use FrontPage to offer Web design and consulting services to
both Internet and intranet clients.
Small businesses use FrontPage to build Web sites to market their products and
services.
Hobbyists use FrontPaget at home to create their own, personal Web sites.
What advantages are there to using FrontPage 2000 and Office 2000 together?
FrontPage 2000 integrates more tightly with Microsoft Office than any other Web
creation and management tool. This integration can save you time, effort and money by
helping you get more out the software and content you already have. Bringing your existing
content into a FrontPage Web is a quick and easy process since FrontPage uses the Office
RTF (converters), which will convert all popular word processing documents and
spreadsheets to HTML. You will also see that the toolbar and menus in FrontPage are very
similar to those used in Office. Further, you can use FrontPage 2000 to manage hyperlinks
that you’ve created within your Office 2000 documents. FrontPage utilizes the Office
spell checker (including the Microsoft Word Custom Dictionary), as well as the Office
thesaurus. Finally, if you like using keyboard shortcuts, FrontPage 2000 supports the top 25
Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts.
What are some of the advantages of using FrontPage 2000 to build and
manage an intranet?
Organizations creating intranets will find the integration between Office, FrontPage and
Windows NT® Server to be a compelling platform on which to build departmental intranets.
Intranet users will find improved browser integration, better Internet Information Server
integration, improvements in performance and large Web scalability, and one-button
publishing with multi-user conflict resolution.
FrontPage 2000 and Microsoft Office 2000 together are the easiest way to get intranets up and
running quickly. Recently, Microsoft developed the Microsoft 60-Minute Intranet Kit to
help users build and manage team-based intranets using Microsoft FrontPage and Microsoft
Office 2000. You can order a free copy of version 2.0 of the kit from the Microsoft 60
Minute Intranet Web Site.
How well does FrontPage 2000 work with large Web sites?
FrontPage 2000 offers improved performance with large webs. Enhancements to the FrontPage
wire protocol and UI mean that FrontPage 2000 incrementally downloads Web site file and
hyperlink information based on the information displayed in the FrontPage Explorer.
Essentially, FrontPage 2000 retrieves data on a "need to know" basis, rather than
loading an entire Web of data.
When remotely authoring a web, does FrontPage download the entire web being
authored?
When a user is dialing in to author a site, FrontPage downloads only those files required
in a current FrontPage Explorer view. As the user navigates through the various
levels of a site, additional files are downloaded as necessary. When the user is
then ready to post the site, FrontPage uploads only those files that are new or have
been modified. NOTE: Remote authoring requires that the FrontPage Server
Extensions be installed on the client machine used for authoring.
Does FrontPage 2000 support a preferred browser?
FrontPage 2000 is an open solution and therefore any browser can view sites that are created
in FrontPage. However, FrontPage does support some of the pioneering technologies
currently found in both Internet Explorer 5.0 and Netscape Communicator browsers, such as
Dynamic HTML. Internet Explorer 5.0 browsers can take advantage of the Channel Definition
Format and Cascading Style Sheet support found in FrontPage 2000. Also, FrontPage
2000 includes an in-place Preview tab that allows you to preview Web pages in browser mode
without leaving the FrontPage Editor. This tab relies on the Internet Explorer
5.0 browser
component. Of course, FrontPage 2000 also offers the "Preview in Browser" feature
that lets you preview a site in any browser loaded on your machine.
Do you have a preferred server that you support?
No, FrontPage is an open solution and Web sites created with FrontPage can be published to
any popular UNIX or Windows NT Web server via the FrontPage Server Extensions. It is
important to point out, however, that you can publish a FrontPage Web site to any
server—even if that server doesn’t support the FrontPage Server Extensions. This
is accomplished through the Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard included in FrontPage
2000.
Also, if you are using Microsoft Internet Information Server as a hosting server for your
Web site, FrontPage 2000 will take advantage of the more powerful search engine in IIS when
utilizing the Search FrontPage component.
What are FrontPage Themes?
FrontPage Themes are graphical designs that allow you to create great-looking Web sites
without hiring a graphic designer. You simply select from over 50 professionally designed
themes and then apply it to any or all of the pages in your site. Each theme includes
complementary graphical elements like backgrounds, bullets, images, and more. There are
more than 50 themes in FrontPage 2000 each containing 8 different combinations you can
choose from!
Can FrontPage Themes be customized or created from scratch?
Absolutely. The Software Developers Kit (SDK) included with FrontPage
2000, contains
the FrontPage Theme Designer which allows users to easily customize existing themes or to
create novel themes of their own. For more information see the "how to"
article, Customizing Themes with the FrontPage 2000 Theme Designer.
What happened to the "Bonus Pack"?
FrontPage 2000 includes all the "Bonus Pack" components -- they just aren’t
called the "Bonus Pack" in FrontPage 2000. In fact, not only are the Bonus Pack
components included in FrontPage 2000, they actually got better. A new version of Image
Composer, which includes GIF Animator, joins Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, Internet
Mail and News, the Web Publishing Wizard (which has been enhanced and integrated into
FrontPage 2000, and Personal Web Server for Windows 9x).
What is FrontPage Express?
FrontPage Express is the HTML page-authoring component that ships with Microsoft Internet
Explorer 4.0. It offers a subset of the functionality found in the FrontPage Editor. New
users unfamiliar with HTML authoring will find FrontPage Express to be an easy-to-use tool
to create simple Webs of a few pages or less. FrontPage Express also makes it easy to
publish pages to the World Wide Web. FrontPage Express does not include any site
management features, FrontPage themes, WYSIWYG frames, table tools, Image Composer, or any
of the new FrontPage 98 image editing features nor does it support style sheets, Dynamic
HTML, and push channel support.
