Using FrontPage Express to Create, Edit & Organize Web Pages

Overview

This page on the World-Wide Web will provide you with experience creating Web pages.

Build on Current Skills, Re-interpreted in a New Medium

Creating Web pages is like using Microsoft Word. You'll recognize many of the Menu titles and items. There are even a lot of format icons that are the same.

A Web page is not intended to be a paper document, so there are some important differences. Understanding how the Web differs from paper will help you understand why some things seem hard.

The Web is designed to be viewed with a browser. The browser takes a text and specification document and converts it so you can see it. How the conversion is done is controlled, in part, by the person who will view the document. Note that this is the opposite from wordprocessing. There, the author controls the appearance. With the Web, it is the reader who has control.

The implication is that you shouldn't -- and in some cases can't -- provide all the design details.

Just a few examples:

You can't use tabs. They don't exist on Web pages. How do you start a paragraph? Just start typing. Paragraphs are automatically separated by blank lines.

No double spaces. The space between sentences only permits single spacing, so get rid of the habit of hitting the space bar twice between sentences. (That was an old typing trick that lost its utility long ago.) This also means that you can't use the space bar to move text to the center of the page. There is a center function that will do this for you.

No control over the width of the page. You can't set a right margin. This is a fundamental control that is given to the reader. All Web browser windows can be re-sized. The browser will adjust the contents of the page automatically.

Limited type face availability, and some constraints on size and spacing. Word processors have given us great power of expression with many type faces. You can even exercise considerable control over the size of the type and how closely the lines are spaced. Currently, you can depend on most browsers having only three basic type faces. This will change over the next year or two. But right now, you are very limited in your choices.

Is the Web a step backward? Not at all.

The constraints listed above have the goal of making your Web pages look as good as possible on a variety of computer displays.

You'll see that there are straight-forward ways to be very expressive in your Web page design. Remember, it isn't a wordprocessor that you'll be using!

Learning to use FrontPage Express -- a WYSIWYG Web Page Editor

Each of the links below takes you to a section with instructions and provides the materials on which you will work. You'll actually modify the instructions pages.

	Discovering FrontPage Express	See the location of the basic functions of FrontPage Express.
	Starting with Some Basic Operations	Learn about entering and modifying text, creating lists of items, and organizing pages with horizontal lines.
	Using Tables for Data and Design Control	Discover the utility of tables for doing the expected -- organizing data -- and the pleasure of having a "hidden" way to organize the appearance of your Web page.
	Adding Structure with Headers and Indenting	Build your Web page so that it is easy to see its organization.
	Inserting Graphic Images	Add interest and information with icons, drawings, scans and photographs.
	Creating Hyperlinks to Connect Pages	Join Web pages by building links from items on one page to another Web page.

last updated: May 19, 1998 06:33 PM