Project Update 1

WRITING YOUR FIRST WEB PAGE

This chapter covered development of a simple one-page web, including the basics of page design, formatting of text (including lists), and inserting images, horizontal lines and hyperlinks. The discussion on page design was very helpful in designing my own website. I tried to follow suggestions on finding a "hook" for the site, and making sure it was clearly identified in the index page. I tried to keep the design simple, focusing the viewer on the content, and used plenty of white space for ease of reading.

USING COLOR, IMAGES AND IMAGEMAPS

This chapter covered just the basics on file formats and their characteristics, organizing images, inserting images onto the page, using FrontPage 2000’s image processing tools, placement of text in relation to an images, and creating imagemaps and thumbnails. I often referred to the topic of Coordinating Images and Text using the Picture Properties menu to place graphics and text on the page.

CREATING TABLES

Tables are very useful tools for layout of a page, and this chapter introduced how to create and modify them. For my index page, I first tried to use tables to develop the basic design, but later found the Layout Template (with two-column body), covered in Chapter 10, more helpful for my particular needs. After adding basic images and text to the template, I outlined the left column with a light blue table.

WORKING WITH FRAMES

A thorough discussion of frames is found in this chapter. After reading this chapter, I didn’t use frames, as my web has few pages, so the need to orient viewers through sets of pages was not necessary. Also, I learned that many viewers are not using larger screens (and frames take up precious viewing space), and many viewers do not like frames.

STANDARDIZING VISUAL ELEMENTS WITH THEMES

How to create a web using themes is covered in this chapter. I chose not to use themes, as I couldn’t find one that I felt fit the character of my web in terms of color and graphics.

STANDARDIZING YOUR PAGES WITH TEMPLATES

All of the FrontPage templates are covered, including content-oriented templates (e.g., FAQ pages), layout templates, and custom templates. I used the two-column body layout template for my index page, and found it to be very flexible in terms of column sizing.

ADVANCED DESIGN FEATURES WITH STYLE SHEETS FORMS

A good introduction to style sheets is covered in the chapter. The chapter first covers how HTML embeds a style sheet within a page; sets properties of a single tag and its contents with inline styles; defines the style of a group of tags; and links pages to a style sheet. It continues with how to create style sheets with FrontPage using the Format -Styles, -Paragraph, -Borders and Shading, Bullets & Numbering, and Position dialogue boxes. It also covers how to create a style sheet for linking using File-New-Page-Style Sheets, and Format-Style Sheet-Links. I hope to apply what I learned in this chapter to add to the uniformity my web pages by creating a new page style sheet and linking it to all pages except the index and discussion web pages.

ACTIVATING YOUR SITE WITH ACTIVE ELEMENTS AND COMPONENTS

This chapter covers creating forms from scratch or with a page wizard, and customizing forms. I will use the information in this chapter to help troubleshoot the Discussion Web on my website, which works except for the table of contents page.