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Microsoft FrontPage 97 is a vast improvement over the previous version (1.1) which was little more than a repackaged version of the product shipped by Vermeer (Microsoft purchased Vermeer earlier this year). FrontPage 97 is a decisive step towards enabling the average person to build Web sites. It is one of the most full-featured Web design systems available today. Microsoft FrontPage 97 has a unique combination of features for building and installing a small- to medium-sized Web/Internet site that can easily run to 400-500 pages. The program is centered around two primary applications, Explorer and Editor, which provide Web site management and Web editing capabilities. In addition, FrontPage 97 includes a Bonus Pack which includes FrontPage Editor, FrontPage Explorer, Microsoft Personal Web Server, Image Composer, Internet Explorer and Web Publishing Wizard. Living up to Microsoft's claims, it really is everything you need to create and test a Web site. The FrontPage 97 Explorer is a Web site management tool that provides two views of your site: a link tree that maps out your site's files and hyperlink connections, and a folder view that mimics Windows Explorer's look and feel by representing the directory structure of the site with expanding and collapsing files and folders. Like Windows Explorer, FrontPage 97 Explorer allows full OLE drag-and-drop support. HTML and image files can be dragged between the Explorer and other applications with OLE capabilities. Both views allow editing only of the directory structure and not of hyperlinks. Using the visual tools, templates and wizards included in FrontPage 97, anyone can design a good-looking Web site within just a few hours. In the Tools menu and on the toolbar are options to verify and recalculate hyperlinks. The verify function will run through all pages on the site and check the validity of internal and external links. A summary of broken links is displayed in a dialog with options to edit the link, to edit the page containing the link, and to add the link to a to-do list. Web sites are presented in hierarchical views and in site diagram form. Both views provide a useful picture of the Web site and let the user jump to any of its pages by selecting a page from either view with just a mouse click. Overall, the FrontPage 97 Explorer is a powerful, easy-to-use management tool. FrontPage 97 maintains a word-processing-like approach to HTML editing. The FrontPage 97 Editor is used to create and maintain individual Web pages. Users familiar with Microsoft Office will feel accustomed to the editor's operation and menu structure right away. The new Editor sports a ton of improved features and supports the latest browser tricks, such as blinking and marquee text, bullet and numbering styles, table border colors, page margins, and font selections. As in Microsoft Word 97, when you type a Web address into your page, it's automatically converted into a hyperlink. You can drag and drop URLs and other hyperlinks directly from your Web browser into FrontPage. You can also import graphics and multimedia files from Windows Explorer and a selected range from an Excel spreadsheet, which FrontPage turns into a table. Editor does, however, have a few limitations. When using Editor, you can't drop a table onto the page in an arbitrary spot as you can with some other Web authoring programs such as NetObjects Fusion. The table can be inserted only in the linear flow of HTML tags, just as you would do in a word processor. Like the initial implementation of tables in Microsoft Word, tables can only be formatted and modified via dialog boxes, not directly manipulated. The page designer still has to deal with pesky table attributes such as cell spacing, cell padding, and cell spans. But, beyond a few problems, as word-processer-like HTML editors go, FrontPage 97 is the best I've used. I found it much better than Netscape Gold 3.0, HotMeTaL Pro, and Hot Dog Pro in terms of ease of use and integrated functions. Most important, FrontPage 97 produces clean and well-formatted HTML. There's also an HTML editor available to tweak the HTML code by hand. The HTML editor color-codes the source code to make it easier to view and differentiate between different HTML version levels and extension types. One of the most useful features of the FrontPage 97 Editor is the extensive drag-and-drop support. You can drag and drop images from a Web browser, or the desktop directly into FrontPage 97. Once there, you can convert the images back and forth from GIF to JPG, or change the attributes of any image on the page. For example, with a click of the mouse, you could make a GIF you dragged from another Web page interlaced, or convert it to JPG format. You can also import files and entire folders into your site by simply dragging them from Windows Explorer into the FrontPage Explorer Folders view. There are other features that only a year ago would have required the use of a costly Web site designer to complete. These features include Wizards that generate skeleton documents for entire Web sites complete with professional graphics design, Wizards that generate professionally formatted pages, that are used like templates and can be modified for any Web site (e.g., press release pages, glossaries, forms pages, log-in pages), one-button insertion of form fields, ActiveX Components, Java Applets, or PowerPoint Animations, and point-and-click creation of image maps and pages with frames. In addition, the Script Wizard automatically generates the VBScript code necessary to generate events for ActiveX components. Using the wizards and templates in unison, a user can create some very slick-looking pages within minutes. A Database Connection Wizard eases database access to some extent, though knowledge of SQL still is required. There are a number of WebBots included to help automate user interaction. In addition, Java applets and multimedia sound and video can easily be inserted into your pages using this feature. About 30 pre-formed pages can be created via wizards or templates, including a survey form, a user registration form, a table of database query results, and pages using frames. Microsoft has expanded and retooled FrontPage's interface. For example, one new tool can automatically make any color you touch transparent, something you'd normally have to do in a program like Photoshop. Dialogue boxes (such as Page Properties) now organize functions and settings like page margins and background sounds on tabbed pages. However, to view your work as it will appear online, you'll have to load your Web browser. Another toolbar provides the usual text-formatting options. But, be careful here, only Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 supports all of the formatting options available. When FrontPage 97 was installed, I allowed several new TrueType typefaces to be added to my system. These typefaces were also made available to the FrontPage 97 Editor. But, when viewing my pages with Netscape Navigator 2, my typeface request was ignored. Two other toolbars cater to the intermediate user. The Advanced toolbar lets you insert a Java applet, an ActiveX control, a plug-in object (such as an Acrobat or ShockWave file), or a PowerPoint animation. When one is inserted, FrontPage 97 presents a dialog requesting the parameters required by the specific applet, control, or other object. The Forms toolbar lays out the various HTML form fields. Clicking on one of the fields causes a complete form tag to be inserted at the cursor. This form won't do anything interesting, however, until you edit the HTML code to add an action attribute that links to a CGI or server API program on the server, or add JavaScript or VBScript handlers to the form fields, or use the built-in FrontPage 97 WebBots. FrontPage 97 WebBots give you seamless, interactive object programming that you can simply drag and drop into your Web pages. Bots encompass abilities that would normally require custom CGI programming. For example, use the Web page's Include Bot to insert the contents of a file you designate, guaranteeing that global elements on your Web pages, such as headers and footers, will be consistent within your site. The Save Results Bot pulls information from any form on your site and stores it in a format of your choosing. Other Bots included in FrontPage 97 are the Confirmation Field Bot (for processing visitor information), the Discussion Bot (for feedback), the Registration Bot (for registering visitors) and the Search Bot. Built-in support for Internet Database Connector (IDC) programming is a valuable tool for Web designers looking to make medium-duty sites as interactive as possible. Two WebBots and a wizard help to make the setup of IDC queries and forms easier, but knowledge of Open Database Connectivity and a working database on the other end is still required. In addition, FrontPage 97's tools for capturing data are more limited. You cannot perform direct updates of the back-end database. Instead, form data is saved into a text file that you must manually import. FrontPage 97 ships with 16- and 32-bit Personal Web Servers that support traditional Web standards, such as HTTP and CGI. FrontPage 97 also features the Server Administrator tool for managing security and optional server extensions to aid compatibility. Both the client and server side can be installed on a PC for Web site testing. Once the site is ready, the "copy Web" feature in Explorer lets the user transfer the entire site across the network to another server containing the FrontPage 97 Server Extensions, where the site will automatically be made public. Microsoft Image Composer is a full-fledged image-editing tool for online graphics. It includes more than 500 special effects and supports Adobe's Photoshop-compatible plug-ins. Image Composer uses a Sprite model that makes it easy to adjust the layering order and positioning of objects. The integration of FrontPage 97 with Office 97 makes it easy for users of Office to quickly get the hang of Web page design. FrontPage 97 uses the same thesaurus, spelling checker, file converters, and clip art that is found in Microsoft Word. Most importantly, you can make hyperlinks (like Web hyperlinks) to other office documents and to Web documents. The FrontPage 97 Explorer can show a Web view of office documents and all its power can be used to manage a set of hyperlinked Office documents. For example, the FrontPage 97 Explorer can detect broken links and enable the user to fix them with a click of the mouse. The point-and-click placement of graphics, and easy conversion of text and word processing documents to HTML make creating a small Web site extremely easy. Before FrontPage came along, creating a basic two-three page Web site for a client might have taken me fifteen to twenty hours of work. With FrontPage, I can do the work in less than four hours. When more complex items such as forms or other WebBot functions are considered, the drag-and-drop ease of FrontPage saved me countless hours of CGI programming. With the FrontPage Editor I have now created or edited a few hundred Web pages without looking at the generated HTML source code even once. I do not miss it. Image Composer, an extraordinary little program, has a nice clipart library, which even includes animations. This makes creating Web graphics a snap. In short, if you need to design or manage a Web site, FrontPage 97 will make the job easier and require much less of your time in the process. The FrontPage 97 Web site is located at (http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/). You'll find the shipped version at your local retailers now at a cost of $149. The program can be purchased at a reduced cost of $109 for Microsoft Office users; and a $55 upgrade from previous versions. A beta version for the Mac is now available at the FrontPage Web site (URL above). The Windows beta version of FrontPage expired on 1/31/97 and is no longer available for download. To use FrontPage 97, you'll need: Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 or later (Macintosh version under development), with 486 PC or better (I'd suggest using a Pentium 75 or better), 8 MB RAM (16 MB's for Personal Web Server), 30 MB's of hard disk space, and an SVGA monitor. Herman Torres has a BA in computer science. He is currently studying for an MA. He is a freelance Web design consultant based in Texas. |
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