Getting Started with Microsoft FrontPage
FrontPage is a web page creation tool developed by Microsoft for the beginning to intermediate web designer. FrontPage contains many of the same tools and works under the same basic principles as Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, and other tools like it.
FrontPage is currently in version 2003 for Windows 2000/XP, although previous versions have a similar set of tools available. FrontPage operates as part of the Office suite of products, although it is generally bought separately from the traditional Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access).
Like Dreamweaver and others, FrontPage creates files with the extension .htm or .html. HTML (hypertext markup language) is the language of the Internet, so any program that creates HTML files may be used to make and publish Web pages.
To get started, open FrontPage from your Start menu. Under default conditions, the program should open to a screen similar to the one seen below.
You can choose to create a new blank page or web site -- if you are intending to make a page or site with many elements, such as pictures and multiple pages, it is highly recommended that you choose to create a web site instead of a single blank page. For a simple starting point, click on "One page Web site."
You will be presented with several options for setting up for web site. Feel free to experiment with the templates available to you. For our purposes, we will begin a simple One Page Web Site, which provides one blank page and a folder in which FrontPage will save your web and image files.
Note the default location of your web: c:\My Documents\My Webs\mysite. FrontPage will automatically general several folders within that folder which help the program keep track of your work. You will also notice a file in your window called "index.htm" -- this is the home page of your web site. You may create other files with different names in your web site, but the main page of your site will always be index.htm (or, in some cases, index.html).
To open and edit any file in the Web Site viewing area, simply double-click on its name.
