Font Properties

Many properties of fonts can be changed from the Font dialog box. Highlight the text that will be formatted and select Format|Font from the menu bar.

• Font - Select a simple, common font for the web page. Keep in mind that the list that appears in FrontPage is the list of fonts loaded onto your computer while many of the visitors of your web site will not have the same fonts. Choose a font such as Arial, Geneva, Verdana, Helvetica, or another sans-serif font that is easy to read and most people have loaded on their computers.
• Font Style - Select bold, italics, or a combination of both.
• Size - Font sizes on web pages are designated by different values than the point sizes you may be used to working with in Word and other word processing programs. Font sizes are listed in parentheses next to the HTML point sizes. A point size of 2 or 3 is usually best for paragraph text. Below are examples of the font sizes using Arial font.
  
  font size 1
  font size 2
  font size 3
  font size 4
  font size 5
  
   
• Effects - Many of these effects are unnecessary and some are not viewable on all browsers. It is not recommended that you underline any text as this will confuse your user since links are usually underlined. Use bold and italics to emphasize text instead of underlining. Blink is an old HTML specification and since it is quite annoying, many browsers no longer support it. Strong and Emphasis produce similar results to bold and italics.
• Press OK when finished.

Headings

Explain these. They generally don't work properly in Netscape, but do work when assigned values in themes.

Converting Text to Tables

The text below was typed into FrontPage by pressing the TAB key after each number and ENTER to begin each new line.

The text can be put into a table by selecting Table|Convert|Text to Table from the menu bar. This dialog window will appear. Make a selection and click OK.

• Paragraphs - A new table row will begin at each new paragraph. Each line is placed in a single cell on a new row.
  
• Tabs - A new column will begin at each tab stop.
  
• Commas - A new column will begin at each comma. The text below produces the same table format as the TAB setup.
  
• None - All the highlight text will be placed into a single table cell.
  
• Other - Select another delimiter for creating a table.

• Creating Links Hyperlinks are text or graphics that can be clicked to bring the user to another web file such as a web page or graphic. They are the essence of the World Wide Web as they link pages within sites and web sites to other web sites. To create a hyperlink in FrontPage, follow these steps: Highlight the text or graphic that will be the hyperlink and select Insert|Hyperlink from the menu bar or pressing CTRL+K. If the link will lead to a page within your site, highlight the page on the list and click OK. If it is an external link that will lead to another web site, enter the URL in the URL box. External URLs MUST begin with "http://" or they will not work. For example, to link to the FGCU home page, type "http://www.fgcu.edu/" instead of "www.fgcu.edu/".   E-mail Links Create an e-mail address link by highlighting the text (which should be written as the e-mail address) and pressing CTRL+K. Click the e-mail button with the envelope icon (circled in red below) and enter the e-mail address in the box provided. Click OK on both windows to finish. Bookmarks Text and graphics can be set as bookmarks (called "anchors" everywhere except FrontPage) that can be linked to within a page. For example, if a page lists a course syllabus, the titles for each week can be set as bookmarks and a row of links can be added to the top of the page that will each skip down to those bookmarked sections. This method of using bookmarks allows visitors to your site to quickly access information by not having to scroll down the page to view the information they want. Add a bookmark to a page by following these steps highlighting the text or graphic that will be the bookmark and select Insert|Bookmark... from the menu bar. Enter the bookmark name in the space provided and click OK. Create a link to a bookmark by highlighting the text that will be the link and pressing CTRL+K. Select the bookmark from the drop-down menu in the Optional category and click OK. Link to a bookmark on a separate page by first selecting the file name from the listing and then choosing from the bookmarks in the drop-down menu.   Hotspots By making a graphic a link in the ways that have already been discussed, each graphic can only link to one location. However, you may have a single graphic that has several sections that each need to link to different pages. Hotspots allow you do to this by creating an image map over the graphic Insert the graphic onto the webpage. Using the hotspot tools on the Drawing toolbar, use the necessary shapes to draw the hotspots on the graphic.   The hyperlink window will appear when the mouse button is released. Enter the URL, e-mail address, or bookmark the hotspot will link to. Table Uses On web pages, tables can serve many functions: Page layout Displaying information in formatted tabular form Adding background color and borders to blocks of text Creating a Table A quick way to create a small table is using the table button on the standard toolbar. Click the button and drag the mouse over the grid, highlighting the cells that should appear on the table. When the table size has been selected, click the mouse button again. A table outline with 2 rows and 2 columns will appear on the page: Table Properties Select Table|Properties|Table from the menu border to modify the table's properties. Alignment refers to the table's position on the page, not the alignment of the text within the table. Choose "Center" to center the table on the page, or select left, right, or justify. Default is usually left alignment. Cell padding is the number of pixels between the text and the cell walls. Cell spacing is the number of pixels between the table cells. Specify width sets the width of the table by a distinct number of pixels or by a percentage of the screen width. Specify height is usually not necessary to set since the height depends on the number of rows in the table. The following table was produced by the settings shown in the window above. Border size indicates the depth of the table border. The dotted lines on the table above are shown only as a visual reference of the table structure, but since this table's border is set to 0 pixels, no borders will show on a web page: Below is the same table with a border set to 5 pixels:   Border color will change the color of the borders on the table. The MSIE and Netscape browsers read this property differently. MSIE changes all the border to the solid color, while Netscape keeps the three-dimensional quality of the table and only changes the outer border of the table. Since FrontPage is a Microsoft product, you will always see the MSIE version when constructing a web page in FrontPage.   Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Netscape Navigator 4.7   Light border and dark border change the highlight and shadow colors of the table. Be aware that these attributes are not read by Netscape. Light and dark borders of red and green were added to the table, but notice that the Netscape table is still blue:   Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Netscape Navigator 4.7   Background color adds a background to the table cells. MSIE will add the color to the background of the cells and the space between the cells while Netscape only adds the color to the background of the cells:   Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Netscape Navigator 4.7   Use background picture will add a background image to the table and again, there are differences between browsers. MSIE will repeat the image over the entire background of the table while Netscape repeats the image in each cell:   Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Netscape Navigator 4.7   Cell Properties Select Tables|Properties|Cell from the menu bar or Cell Properties from the shortcut menu to change the properties of the table cells. Begin by highlighting the cells whose properties will be changed. Horizontal alignment is defaulted to the left side of the table cell. Change this attribute to center or right-justify the text within the table cell. Vertical alignment is defaulted at middle as shown in the example below. Since the text in the right-hand column cover more than one line and the left-hand cells do not, that text is centered vertically in the cell. Select "top" or "bottom" to override this default setting. Setting rows spanned and columns spanned is better achieved by a method explained below. Specify width and specify height will set the width and height of the cells. Percentages refer to the portion of the table, not a percentage of the entire screen. Select Header cell to automatically bold and center the content of the cell. Border color is a setting that is not read by Netscape. This changes the color of the cell border only when viewed with MSIE. Note the red borders on the cells in the top row of the MSIE example:   Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Netscape Navigator 4.7 Light and dark border settings will additionally be read by MSIE but not by Netscape.   Background color changes the cell's background color. In Netscape, this is the same effect of setting the entire table's background color since the color is not added between the cells.   Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Netscape Navigator 4.7   Background image adds a graphic to the background of each cell. In Netscape, this is the same effect as setting the background graphic for the entire table since it begins a new repeating pattern for each cell.   Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Netscape Navigator 4.7 Inserting Rows and Columns Quickly add rows or columns to a table by placing the cursor in the cell the new row or column will be adjacent to, right-click the mouse to access the popup shortcut menu, and select Insert Row or Insert Column. Another method is to use the Insert Rows or Columns dialog box: Place the cursor in a cell where the new row or column will be adjacent to. Select Table|Insert|Rows or Columns from the menu bar.     To insert a row, select Rows and enter the Number of Rows. Then select the Location of the new row by selecting Above selection or Below selection from where you placed the cursor in step 1. Click Columns to insert a new column and the choices will change. Enter the Number of columns and the Location left or right of the selected point. Click OK.   Spanning Cells There is often the need to create a cell than spans rows or columns, such as the a title at the top of a table. This example will begin with the same table already used on this page. Insert a new row to the top of the table. Type the text of the row that will be spanned across the columns by typing into the first cell and highlight the cells as shown below: Select Table|Merge Cells from the menu bar or right-click with the mouse and select Merge Cells from the popup shortcut menu.. Center the text in the cell by from the Cell Properties window and deselect the cell. To split the cell again, select the cell and choose Table|Split Cell from the menu bar. Image Types HTML code used on the web recognizes two basic graphic formats - GIF and JPEG. All the images on your web page must be either of these formats. JPEG (Joint Photographic Exchange Group) - As a general rule, photos should be saved as JPEGs. This file type consists of 16 million colors. GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) - These files contain 256 colors or less and should generally be used for non-photo graphics. All of the images on these tutorial pages are saved in GIF format. Inserting a Graphic To add a photo or graphic to a web page, select Insert|Picture|From File from the menu bar. Choose the file and click OK. Picture Properties To change the properties of the picture, select the image and choose Format|Properties from the menu bar. Below Alternative representations, type a description of the image in the Text box. This text will appear in place of the graphic if the user browses your site with graphics turned off on their browser and will also be displayed while the picture is loading. Click the Appearance tab. Change the Alignment if the picture should be aligned to the right or left of the text on the page or if it should be centered on the page. Border thickness will add a border to the picture depending on the number of pixels you enter. Leave this value at "0" if there is no border on the picture. Horizontal spacing and Vertical spacing are measured in pixels and will add white space surrounding the picture either above and below (vertical) or on both sides (horizontal). FrontPage automatically calculates the size of the image. However, if you would like it smaller or larger than actual size, check the Specify size box and enter the new Width and Height values. Please note, it is recommended that you change the actual size of the image in an editing program such as Adobe Photoshop instead of changing these values, particularly if the actual size is large and you want it to appear smaller on the screen. Resizing the actual size of the graphic will lower the download speed of the image. Horizontal Lines Horizontal lines can divide sections of text for easy reading. Place the cursor on the page where the horizontal line should be added. Select Insert|Horizontal Line from the menu bar. Double click on the line to change its properties. Set the Width of the line either as a percentage of the window or an absolute size in pixels. Change the thickness of the line by setting the Height in pixels. Set the Alignment of the line to the left, center, or right size of the page. The lines are automatically shaded to give the illusion of depth. Check the Solid line box to make the line all one color and set a Color for the line if necessary (not supported by Netscape). Shaded horizontal line:   Solid horizontal line (red when viewed with MSIE):   Click OK when finished. Symbols Add unique symbols such as the copyright (©) and accented letters (é) from the Symbol dialog box. Select Insert|Symbol... from the menu bar. Click the symbol on the list you want to add and it will appear in the preview window. Click the Insert button to add the symbol to the page. Keep adding symbols and click Close when finished.   Comments Text can be hidden from visitors to your web page and still be visible to you when the page is edited in FrontPage. These comments can be added by following these steps: Place the cursor on the page at the location where the comment will be added. Select Insert|Comment from the menu bar. Type the text in the Comment box and click OK. Notice that the commented text begins with "Comment: " and is another color to differentiate it from regular text. Open the page in a browser to see that the commented text is not visible on the page. Keyboard shortcuts can save time and the effort of constantly switching from the keyboard to the mouse to execute simple commands. Print this list of FrontPage keyboard shortcuts and keep it by your computer for a quick reference. Note: A plus sign indicates that the keys need to be pressed at the same time. Action Keystroke   Document actions Open a page CTRL+O New page CTRL+N Save CTRL+S Print CTRL+P Properties ALT+ENTER Refresh F5 Spelling F7 Thesaurus SHIFT+F7 Line break SHIFT+ENTER Remove formatting CTRL+Spacebar   Editing Find CTRL+F Replace CTRL+H Insert hyperlink CTRL+K Spell checker F7 Macros ALT+F8 Action Keystroke   Formatting Select all CTRL+A Copy CTRL+C Cut CTRL+X Paste CTRL+V Undo CTRL+Z Redo CTRL+Y Bold CTRL+B Italics CTRL+I Left justified CTRL+L Center justified CTRL+E Right justified CTRL+R Decrease indent CTRL+SHIFT+M Increase indent CTRL+M Web Design Tips Background Images: Use background images with caution. Light watermarks usually work fine, but dark, busy graphics can impair the readability of the page. Solid, muted colors are usually best to use.   Fonts: Stick with common fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman. Although there are many fonts to choose from, if the user does not have a font you choose on their computer, a default font will be used.   Long Pages: Divide the information into different pages. A long and endless scrolling page is difficult to read.   Sound: Refrain from using sound, particularly embedded sound files, if possible. If a sound file must be included, make it a link on the page so the visitor to your page can turn it on and off. Many people surf the web with their computer speakers turned off so embedding a sound file that automatically downloads will unnecessarily increase the download time of the page.   Hyperlinks: Always use descriptive words for link text instead of the simple "Click Here!" For example:   Incorrect - This site includes tutorials for using programs in the Microsoft Office suite. To view the Microsoft Office 2000 tutorials, click here. Correct - To learn more about using the programs of the Microsoft Office suite, visit the Microsoft Office 2000 tutorial homepage.   Page Size: While most Internet users use a screen resolution of 800X600 or higher, there are still users with monitors set to 640X480. Design your web pages so all material is viewable on this small resolution. Therefore, do not create graphics or tables wider than 620 pixels. Testing Since different browsers (mainly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) read webpage differently, preview your pages in both browsers to make sure the page looks the way you want it. FrontPage provides an easy way to accomplish this. Select File|Preview in Browser from the menu bar. The list of browsers installed on your computer will be listed. Highlight the browser name and click Preview for each browser.