 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Microsoft FrontPage 98 Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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I received a polite note from Robin Howells asking me why one of my Web
pages at http://easyrsvp.com/neteditor/index.htm was
blank, other than the background. For the curious, that page is still in place but you will need Netscape to
view the problem. My preferred browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer; a quick check told me everything was
"fine" and I was about to mentally dismiss Robin's problem as a glitch. Something made me fire up Netscape 3
and the results horrified me.
I normally code pages with Notepad because I know the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and it is fun. I test
my pages at validation sites to be sure the code is free of syntax errors. Sometimes I add something and
forget to test the page with Netscape. I run a visitor analysis script that tells me where the visitor came
from, the browser used, the pages viewed, and so on. Of late most visitors were looking at one page only,
which should have rung alarm bells.
FrontPage 98
Microsoft seems to take about three revisions to get a product "right" and I had heard horror stories about
FrontPage, its web site authoring and management product. To be fair, there must be millions of web pages
around the world created with it, and many of the criticisms were from HTML purists or unqualified
novices.
One of the side effects of using an authoring package is that it adds more tags than one would code by hand.
To use a word processing analogy, if you defined the beginning of a list to mean "Treat the following text as
Helvetica", you would not need to define each list element as Helvetica--the typeface would not change. In
many authoring packages, every paragraph is tagged in a seemingly superfluous manner. This is syntactically
correct, but you could be increasing the byte count by almost 50 percent. You don't want your audience to
wait longer than is necessary.
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The "excessive" tagging can be ignored if you want to look at manual coding
as a time-consuming activity that is best left as a pastime. However, if it is going to introduce errors or
unplanned visual effects then you won't be happy. I will come to this later.
To get back to the problem noted by Robin, I had asked our Editor, Carol Daniels, to check this phenomenon
using another version of Netscape. I found I could load the page after a couple of attempts but the first
attempt would not let me view the source code. Carol could view the source. Anyhow, the problem had to be
fixed, but let us first look at FrontPage 98 (FP98).
Creating a web with FP98
What can you do with FP98? Essentially, you can create a Web site and manage it.
This is much more than creating the HTML pages, which it can handle well--it also includes a Personal Web
Server (PWS), so your PC can host those pages. You can also publish your pages on a remote server, a more
common scenario for most. Several concepts are involved.
Installation of FP98 creates a "FrontPage web" on your PC, which is a fancy term to describe a set of
subdirectories and default files where your HTML pages and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts reside. You
get a simple set of starter pages that you can modify with the FrontPage Editor (FE). You can create or
modify graphics with Image Composer (IC). GIF Animator enables you to combine still images to create a
changing image such as some banner advertisements that you may have seen. Over 50 thematic templates are
provided, to get you started. Indeed, the installation process gives you a working, albeit spartan, web
site.
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When you are ready, you can "publish" your pages on the Internet, which is
the process of uploading them to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Alternatively, you have a live
connection to the Internet, so your own PC can host PWS under Windows 95, or you may want a more secure
server such as IIS under Windows NT.
The easy stuff
It is easy for a novice to build pages with text, graphics, and links. It seems to work out of the box, at
least for me. This is fine getting for your personal pages ready. Certain effects, such as inserting a hit
counter are easy to achieve, but don't plan to win any awards for a while.
The difficult stuff
Once you want special effects or database functionality, you have to sit down and learn some new skills or
involve a small team of experts. It is difficult enough if your server runs Windows 95 or NT but if you are
authoring for a UNIX site and wish to run CGI scripts under Perl, the job is much more so, not to mention
beyond the scope of this program.
The supplied templates are nowhere as interesting and varied as the ones you see on the Microsoft site or
else-where. Drop-down menus enable you to skim the surface of ActiveX controls, Java, Javascript, Cascading
Style Sheets and so on. You can insert fancy effects without being a programmer or understanding why they
work. You can build a complex site, but there are many new concepts to grasp and you may not end up with a
"killer" site. To achieve exactly what you want, you may need to hire a programmer for the trickier aspects
and a graphic designer to obtain a unique appearance.
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I found it difficult to understand how to connect Access 97 to my humble
test web site. Part of my problem was that I had not installed all options in Access at some stage, so some
of the errors were puzzling. I had to visit the Microsoft newsgroups to seek wisdom. In the end I succeeded
to get the "Northwind" database to be amenable to online SQL queries. This exploited the Database Region
Wizard, one of many rich tools available in FE.
Bugs
There are a few bugs in FP98, if one is to believe the message traffic in the newsgroups, but the one that
affected me was the example I cited at the start of this article. It is not a bug if everyone sets Internet
Explorer as their web browser or if they write their pages from scratch using FP98.
After Robin and Carol alerted me to the "blank page in Netscape" problem with my hand-coded page, I just
loaded the page in FE and saved it. Instant success, or so I thought. I didn't bother to check every re-saved
page with Netscape as I was distracted with another task. Robin typed back and complimented me on the "nice,
large type" that made my pages so readable. Yikes! One page had the body text larger than the heading. It was
just a set of short bullet points, so it wasn't a total disaster but I had to get to the bottom of these
effects.
To end your suspense, the problem seems to affect pages that were originally authored by another product. FE
wants to add tags around every paragraph and it gets some incorrectly nested. For example, one </td>
was terminated after the ; a misplaced tag caused that "nice, readable type". The solution is check your work
with several browsers. This is not rocket science, but it is easy to miss. I fixed the page, which can be
found at http://easyrsvp.com/neteditor/index.html
(note the extension).
Last word
In conclusion, FP98 is a rich, mature product for the masses. Its editor will re-arrange your Spartan code to
indent it and increase the byte count. This may not concern most people. I have looked briefly at a rare
competitor whose editor is not invasive but FP98 is certainly far easier to use.
Reprinted from the February 1998 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
