I've considered adding a page like this to my Web site,
and I'll take your suggestion as an added incentive. But
I'm behind on several other projects right now and I can't
promise any kind of near-term date.
Also, I suspect I'm not a very typical FrontPage user. As
a result, my best practices and someone else's are
probably quite different.
Overall, I'm much more a Web programmer than a Web
designer. Because of this, my use of FrontPage is almost
entirely for page layout and publishing. I never use:
Navigation View
Link Bars
Themes
Shared Borders
Hover Buttons
Ad Banners
Absolute Positioning
Drawing
Scheduled Include
Web Search
Save Results
Database Results Wizard
Database Editor
Marquees
Hit Counters
Photo Galleries
Table of Contents
Categories
or any other FrontPage components. I used to use Include
Page a lot, but I stopped because it doesn't work on .aspx
pages. The jury is out on Dynamic Web Templates.
I've never purchased a FrontPage Add-In, nor installed any
free ones. Instead, I just write my own code. That's also
why I don't use components like Web Search and Database
Results Wizard. I have much more flexibility writing my
own code.
I've been leaning back toward Absolute Positioning a bit
lately, but only for constructing DHTML menus by hand.
I used to write a lot of ASP code in FrontPage, but during
the past year or two I've gravitated toward writing
ASP.NET code in Visual Studio .NET. I do page layouts in
FrontPage, then add my program code in Visual Studio, test
in Visual Studio, and then use FrontPage to publish.
I generally code page headings and footers as ASP.NET Web
User Controls. This makes it very easy to start a new page
in Visual Studio. I drag my header, footer, and style
sheet onto a new blank page, then start adding form
controls and other content. This is so easy that I really
feel no need to mess around with page templates.
When it comes to creating and aligning tables, inserting
pictures, and formatting HTML, FrontPage is tops. I do
very little of that in Visual Studio.
When developing Web sites, I probably spend more than 80%
of my time in Visual Studio and less than 20% in
FrontPage. Of course, that changes completely when I'm
working on a FrontPage book. During those times, I'm
crawling through every single feature of FrontPage to see
how it works and what the pitfalls might be. And I learn a
lot by find answers to questions on this newsgroup.
I use linked CSS files for almost all typography.
Occasionally, however, I *will* use <b> and <i> tags. I
also use inline styles for things like a blank line:
<p style="margin:0"> </p>
or a "fake" horizontal rule:
<p style="margin:0; font-size:1px;
background-color: #cc0000;"> </p>
I've yet to develop the perfect photo gallery. The one at
http://www.interlacken.com/fp11extras/piclib/default.aspx
is pretty close, except that the facility for titles is
crude and there's no facility for captions.
o Titles come from picture file names: a picture named
0500_Machu_Picchu.jpg, for example, automatically gets
titled "Machu Picchu".)
o To add or organize pictures, I just add the full-sized
photo to a folder in my Web site. The piclist.aspx page
in the left frame reads the folder contents and
generates thumbnails on the fly.
o I have a later version that does slides shows (i.e.
that advances to a new picture every few seconds)
but as yet there are no on-line examples of this.
Most of my Web sites are business systems that run on
Intranets. My personal site at
www.interlacken.com is the
only public one.
My favorite FP2003 features are:
o The Quick Tag Selector.
o Built-in "Open As Text".
o Design view display of ASP.NET tags.
o IntelliSense in Code view.
o Sensible Paste in Code View.
o Enhanced Find/Replace dialog box.
o Remote Site View.
o Publishing in either direction, or synchronizing.
The one thing in FP2003 I would change:
o Add capability for plain-text paste. (Paste <p>, <br>,
<table>, <tr>, <td>, and plain text; discard all
formatting.) Provide an option to make this the default.
Most promising new feature:
o Integration with Windows SharePoint Services. However,
for now, this will primarily interest businesses
that commit to SharePoint as a corporate portal
solution.
Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*------------------------------------------------------*
|\----------------------------------------------------/|
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out ||
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out ||
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition ||
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002 ||
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming ||
|| (All from Microsoft Press) ||
|/----------------------------------------------------\|
*------------------------------------------------------*
anel.... areas are closed off in design view. Can't