"Watch that default"
Issue 5  - 11th December 2000

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AccessFP Bytes - The Bit in the middle!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AnyFrontPageBytes
Designing and crafting with FrontPage
Issue 5: Vol 1: 11th December 2000!
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Editor: Tina Clarke,


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"FrontPage Newbie Secrets" 

Most people new to FrontPage ask the questions contained in this E-Book, however if you are new to FrontPage and have a question that is not available in "FrontPage Newbie Secrets. Write and tell me ) what it is, and it may just find it's way into a second edition. Not only that, I will credit you with asking the question, complete with your site address.

So read the E-Book, start crafting your site and see if you can come up with that burning question. <s>

***HAPPY FRONTPAGE CRAFTING***

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"Microsoft FrontPage Bulletin Archives"

++++ How do I get my FREE E-Books? ++++

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Once you have downloaded an e-book to the folder of your choice on your hard drive, insert the password that was sent to you in your welcome message when you first signed up. Or you can find it in the archives at the yahoo interface.

If you are reading this Ezine because it was forwarded to you and you want the E-Books all you have to do is subscribe. For details see SUBSCRIPTION MANAGEMENT. Enjoy.

Once every fourth issue AccessFP Ezine will be sent out, this is written entirely by myself. The other issues consist of AccessFP Bytes - The Bit in the Middle! Complete with guest article or tip.

This Issue the format has changed slightly due to feedback from members. It was felt the 'Guide to FrontPage' made the Ezine rather long and though I had planned to start at the beginning of how to set up FrontPage and work through all the features, this has now been replaced with a section called 'How do they do that?' 

We now have over 200 members and hopefully more will join. Please continue with sending in your feedback, I really really want to hear what you have to say, your ideas, thoughts and opinions help make the Ezine grow. So don't delay, send off that email with your thought's today!

Our other bit of news is that AccessFP Ezine has moved from Topica to Egroups. This is because Egroups offer auto responders and whole lot more other features that make life much easier for me, so that I can concentrate on content and have a life. (smile)

Enjoy the rest of the ezine.

Tina

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2 TIPS AND TRICKS - Watch that default
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It is very common for web masters to overlook turning their page background colour to white because it already appears white in the Normal and Preview Views in FrontPage when it is actually set to the default setting "automatic". (If you use a ready made theme the background text and links colours will be configured already)

If you also have your browser set to using Windows colours you are not going to see your mistake when you preview your site in the browser either.

How do I check and configure my pages?

Firstly change the colours setting in your browser. 

For Internet Explorer 

Go to Tools | General tab | Colors | untick 'use windows colours' and choose a background colour that most people would not use as a background. Spruce pink is good to use, do not select grey as some people use this. Click Ok twice and you have now configured your browser to see pages on your hard drive and on the www with the colour you defined.

For Netscape Navigator

Go to Edit | Preferences | Open 'Appearance Folder' | Colors | untick 'use windows colours' and choose a background colour that most people would not use as a background. Spruce pink is good to use, do not select grey as some people use this. Click Ok twice and you have now configured your browser to see pages on your hard drive and on the www with the colour you defined. 

To check out a site that does not have their background configured see: http://www.yahoo.com 
For further information check out James Huggins excellent article
http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/web1/background_colors.htm

Now to configure your background in FrontPage 2000.
Right click your mouse on your page in Normal View and select 'Page Properties'| General | Background | Colours | Background there you can select the colour of your choice. There are several other things you can configure at the same time, whilst your there.

Text
Hyperlink
Active Hyperlink
Visited Hyperlink
Enable Hyperlink Rollover effect's 
Select a background picture and/or watermark it.
You can also 'Get background information from another page'. 

Tip: If you do this be sure to create a page specifically for this, as if you use a page like your index page, you may wish in the future to have this page different from the rest and then you would have to go in and change them all.

To thwart forgetting to configure your background in the future, you can modify your "normal page template" in FrontPage to always have white set as the background colour automatically when you create a new page, or indeed any other colour. There are several other things you should configure at the same time

For instance:
Open FrontPage
Click File | New | Page | Normal
DO NOT tick "add task"
Click ok
Then change the background, fonts and hyperlinks to the colours you wish to choose, you can change the margins, enter meta tags that you wish to use globally and change the title of the page as well as several other things with this dialog box.

Now you are ready to save:
Click File | Save As (Not Save)
next to 'File Name' insert the text normal (make sure you type in lowercase as this can cause problems with FTP if you use FTP to publish. (FrontPage will automatically use the correct extension)
Click the 'change' button and insert the text Normal
In the 'Save as type' box, click 'FrontPage Template' (*.tem)
Click Save
The 'Save As Template' Dialog box pops up
In the 'Title box', type a title for the template, which will appear with the standard templates on the General tab in the New dialog box, this should already say Normal if you inserted the title as above.
In the 'Name box', type the file name of the template, this should already say Normal if you inserted the file name as above.
In the Description box, type a description of the template, for example, describe the type of page that is created with the template. When you create a new page, this description will appear in the New dialog box when you select the template.
Click 'Save template in the current web'
Click ok.
From now on you will have a Normal Template set up with the background, text hyperlinks and certain meta tags already configured for you. 

Note: For further help with meta tags you can use the FREE FrontPage Add-on TP_ErrOmi. See http://solution-shelf.com
You can also make other templates with different names for different occasions, but never again will you be caught with your web pages appearing 'spruce pink'.
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3 How do they do that?
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How do you take a shortcut to working live in FrontPage?


To work live on the server at one's host one normally opens FrontPage and does the following:

File | Open | a dialog box called 'Open Web' will pop up.
From the menu on the left hand side of the box select 'Web Folders'. 

Where it says 'Folder names' insert the url of the site you wish to open live on the server. E.G. http://www.accessfp.net/
Press Open

Once it is launched it will bring up the page that the browser is viewing at that moment. It will ask you for your username and password then load the site in full ready for editing live on the server. Be warned that any changes will not correspond to your saved website on your hard drive.

Shortcut:

In Internet Explorer there is a Edit button available that can be used as a shortcut to work on your site live.

To add the edit button to the menu bar do the following:

View | Toolbars | Customize select 'Edit' from the left pane click the 'Add' button, this is then added in the right hand pane, where you can move it up or down the list of icons already selected, press the close button.

In order to add a Web Editor to the browser list, you must open Editor and save a page then view it in the browser.

In order for this edit button to launch in FrontPage you must make it your default editor.

Tools | Internet Options | Program Tab | Html Editors
Click on the dropdown arrow and select Microsoft FrontPage (If you have FP98 it will say Microsoft FrontPage Editor)
Press OK.

Otherwise, you have to click on the dropdown arrow next to the edit button and select FrontPage from the list in order to launch it.

Once it is launched it will bring up the page that the browser is viewing at that moment. It will ask you for your username and password then load the site in full ready for editing live on the server.

Some source material was provided by
Linda
Computer Tutor
http://www.personal-computer-tutor.com

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4 GENERALLY SPEAKING:
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1.

Jimco Add-ins News - http://www.jimcoaddins.com/

Jimco Add-ins is happy to announce that QuickBar 2.0 BETA is available on the Jimco Add-ins Web site on the Jimco Utilities page.

QuickBar 2.0 is a complete rewrite of QuickBar and provides a lot of added functionality.

New features added to Jimco QuickBar 2.0:

* Store username and password information so that webs can be opened without having to enter this information each time. (See notes below for specifics on this feature.)

* New dialogs, including a status bar to let you know what's going on.

* Storage of opened webs now works correctly so that the dropdown will always be populated.

Items not yet implemented:

* Publishing. You will also be able to store authentication information for publishing.

* Storage of credentials for creating new webs. This feature may not be implemented.

* Removal of webs from the open web dropdown. This feature will be added in later releases.

=================================================
IMPORTANT NOTE ON HOW QUICKBAR STORES AUTHENTICATION INFORMATION:
Authentication information stored by QuickBar 2.0 is encrypted in the Registry using public key/private key encryption algorithms. In addition, this information is stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive in the Registry. Here fore, only you will even be able to see the encrypted information.

The important thing to note is that even if you could figure out the
algorithm (which you can't), you wouldn't be able to decrypt the username nd password unless you knew the private key, and only I know the private Key. (Jimco)
================================================

2.

Ever wanted a thumbnail of pages on your site? With Windows 98x your half way there.
Run Windows Explorer and go to C:\Windows\Favourites.
Right Click on your Favourites folder, or one of its subfolders, and select Properties.

Select the 'Enable thumbnail view' checkbox.
Open the folder you just altered, then select View on the Toolbar and press Refresh. Then select the Views Icon and click Thumbnails.

Explorer will create mini versions of your favourite sites. If you don't have the website on your hard drive then you must be connected to the net in order for the thumbnails to be fetched. To obtain an up-to-date thumbnail Right click the thumbnail and press 'Refresh Thumbnail'

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5 WEB SITE PICKS:
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****General Links****

TagCheck
http://www.tafweb.com/tagcheck.html
We all make mistakes in writing the HTML code for our pages, and often the mistakes are simple but difficult to spot. TagCheck checks your code for many of the common errors such as missing end tags, badly nested tags, etc.

MetaWizard
http://tafweb.hypermart.net/metawizard.html
If you want the best listing on many of the search engines you need to include META tags at the top of your web page. These meta tags give a description of the page, keywords and other items of information. The trouble is that it's difficult to remember how to form the tags - MetaWizard will guide you through meta tag creation

Recommended by Micki
http://www.mi-designs.com
Champagne sites on beer budgets

Lockergnome Tips
http://virtualgraphicsworld.freeservers.com/lockergnome.htm
Virtual graphics world has put together all the tips that Chris Pirillo of http://www.Lockergnome.com has presented in his Ezine over the years. (You can sign up for the Lockergnome Ezine on the homepage of http://www.accessfp.net ) Lockergnome is all about Microsoft products and great free software. 

RECOMMENDED by the Tina

****FrontPage Links****

Installing FrontPage Extensions for Apache on Linux
http://www.e-gineer.com/instructions/install-frontpage-extensions-for-apache-on-linux.phtml


Jcu Infoservice - Microsoft FrontPage 98
http://www.jcu.edu/infoservice/training/frontpage/toc.htm
Short tutorial on FrontPage 98


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6 Sponsors:
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PixelMill
http://www.accessfp.net/pixelmillca.htm
PixelMill offers a full range of high quality, professionally designed Microsoft FrontPage 98/2000 themes. By using real graphical artists, and not computer techies, we are able to give our clients real themes to use on real websites.

J-Bots 2000
http://www.accessfp.net/jbotsca.htm

J-Bots 2000 is an add-in for FrontPage 2000 featuring 25 components that can make your web sites more attractive, more engaging, and easier to navigate. They're fast and easy to use, and require no programming skills. Simply fill in dialog boxes, click the Generate button, and JavaScript code will automatically create the function you desire.

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7 VIRTUAL INTERVIEW WITH A MEMBER:
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This is where we conduct our virtual interview. If you would like to take this interview just cut out the questions fill them in, and send them in an email to: VI@accessfp.net

This month we interview:

Name - David Karlins
Age -
Nationality -
Site name - ppinet.com
Site address - http://www.ppinet.com
Email -

Q How long have you been on the net?
A I've had my current Web site for about 3 years.

Q What is your site called, when did you start it and what is it
about?
A My site is ppinet.com, and the purpose is to provide support resources for readers of my web design books (and others).

Q What made you choose this subject and what was the hardest part
in making your site?
A I've found that readers of web design books expect that the author will have a web site with additional resources like corrections, links, support discussion forums and articles.

Q What do you think makes your site stand out from the rest?
A I'm not really competing with anyone since who else would want to
provide a support site for my books? I wish other people wanted to
create sites for that, but it's not likely.

Q Do you have any tips for other members?
A I'd refer folks to my 8 Steps to Creating a Web site series- you'll find links to it at my site.

Q What are your favourite sites? (Limit of 5)
A Oh, that's tough! Tina's of course
http://www.accessfp.net/
and
http://www.Webpagesthatsuck.com
http://www.mozplace.com
http://www.poorrichard.com
http://www.cookwood.com

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8 ACCESSFP EZINE THE GLOSSARY:
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We bring you three new terms each month

Animated GIF 

A file containing a series of GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) graphics that are displayed in rapid sequence in a Web browser, giving the appearance of a moving picture. 

Anonymous FTP 

The ability to access a remote computer system on which one does not have an account, via the Internet's File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Users have restricted access rights with anonymous FTP and usually can only list, view, or copy files to or from a public directory on the remote system. Many FTP sites do not permit anonymous FTP access in order to maintain security.

ASCII

(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) A coding scheme using 7 or 8 bits that assigns numeric values to up to 256 characters, including letters, numerals, punctuation marks, control characters, and other symbols. ASCII was developed in 1968 to standardize data transmission among disparate hardware and software systems and is built into all personal computers. 

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9 CONTACT INFORMATION
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Thank you! I'm looking forward to publish your excellent work in "AccessFP Bytes - The Bit in the Middle" soon. 

Tina Clarke
<a href="http://www.accessfp.net/">AccessFP - FrontPage Resource Centre</a>