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The Top 3 Things You Should NOT Do in FrontPage Templates
- Move table lines.
Most FrontPage web templates are built based on layouts that have
been built with tables. This particular template makes use of several
levels of nesting tables to achieve the layout. If you drag on a table
line, you will freeze the page and ruin the layout. If at any point you
accidentally move a table line, immediately go to Edit > Undo.
- Underline text.
Underlining text makes people think that it's a link. This is confusing.
Don't do it!
- Use "spaces" to format text/pictures.
Do NOT insert extra spaces to get text or pictures to where you want
it. This adds lots of needless code to your page and may make your page
formatting break if someone has a smaller browser window size.
The Top 3 Things You Should Know How to Do in FrontPage
- Preview in Browser!
The "Preview" tab is notorious for causing skipped heart-beats when
something "looks funny" to a user. Table cell colors, transparent gif
colors, table layouts... occasionally, FrontPage's "Preview" will not
work as it should. Your best bet is to go to File > Preview in Browser
and look at the site in an actual Internet Explorer or Netscape window.
In fact, you should download different browsers (Netscape, Opera, and
various versions of each) as you build your site so that you can test
your site. We generally leave our Preview Window open and "refresh" it
as we make changes.
- Publish to a sub-web.
Do you have an existing web site? If so, then you can test your site
out -- and have others test it -- by publishing your web site to a temporary
folder on your existing site. This means that you don't have to worry
about overwriting your existing site, no one but you will know it's there
(unless you tell others), and you can easily delete it when you're done
testing. To do this, go to File > Publish and type in your URL as usual,
but add a subfolder at the end: http://www.yoursite.com/subfoldername,
for example. (The subfolder doesn't have to exist already -- if it's new,
FrontPage will ask if it can create a new web there.) Go ahead and publish
your web as usual, then preview the URL in a browser and test it out.
- Choose user-friendly fonts.
If you are editing HTML text (i.e., not using pictures that
have text on them), you will want to make sure that you choose user-friendly
fonts. In order for HTML text to display in a certain font, the viewer
will have to have the font on their system. This is why you see so many
sites using Arial, Verdana, or Times New Roman for their HTML text --
those fonts are virtually guaranteed to be on everyone's system. If you
try to use a fancy font, like "BrushScript" or "Halloween," it's very
possible that people who don't have that font will not be able to view
it. Instead of the "cool" effect that you were going for, they'll see
something in a default font (usually Times New Roman) -- which usually
clashes with the rest of your page. If you want to have a fancy font for
a logo or heading, you should create an image using an image editor and
insert the image into your web page instead.
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