Using the Enhanced Publishing Feature in FrontPage 2002
The new Enhanced Publishing Dialog in Microsoft FrontPage® 2002 makes publishing simpler by allowing you to see both the pages and files on the source Web and the pages and files on the destination web at the same time. Now, you can easily drag, drop, or delete files in either location.
To use the Enhanced Publishing Dialog, open a new or existing Web in FrontPage 2002 and do the following:
From the File menu, click Publish Web.
Under Enter publish destination:, enter a URL (see Tip:) or click Browse to select a destination Web.
In the Publish Web dialog, click the Show>> button to show the contents of the server you're publishing to.
Click and drag files from the source to the destination, or you can click Publish to publish all new or changed pages.
Tip: Type the destination Web URL in the form- http://servername/directory (where servername is the name of the server you want to publish to, and directory is the directory you want it placed in).
I must be in a CSS mood today so here's another tip (which also happens to be a question we get a lot).
Most web designers know you can use CSS to alter the appearance of your hyperlinks. For example, if you wanted to remove the underlines from your hyperlinks you could add the following to your <HEAD> section:
The next question then is what if I don't want the style applied to ALL of my hyperlinks? How can you apply it to just certain links? The answer is simple. Change the code above to:
Have you ever visited a site and noticed that there was a small icon (image) next to the URL in your address bar or bookmarked a site and saw that it had an icon next to it?
This is done by creating a 16x16 pixel icon (.ico) file with a standard graphics or icon maker program, such as IconForge, and importing it into the root of your web site.
Once you have the .ico file in your root you need to add the following tag to the <HEAD> section of your site:
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="myicon.ico">
That's it! You can find out more information about creating a Favorites Icon by visiting Favicon.com
Is it possible to stream Real Audio or Real Video without a streaming media server?
Yes. You can go to www.real.com and get Real Producer. Once you've created your file you can have the program create the HTML page for you and choose the option for a site with out a "Real Server". Here's how it works:
(This is a Real Audio Example but you can do the same thing with Video)
RealPlayer 5.0 and higher has the ability to play files delivered via Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). What this means is that now streaming audio can be delivered in the same manner as a gif or text file without requiring Progressive Network's proprietary PNM protocol.
How to Set up Content without a Real Server
After you have created your .ra file with your Real tools, you would create a text file with the extension .ram. In this text file, you would make a reference to your .ra file so that the server can serve it. The contents of the file would be:
On your web page, you would reference the .ram file, NOT the .ra file (i.e., http://yourdomain.com/path_to_file/file.ram). If you reference the .ra file, it will download completely to the client system before playing. The .ram file is the one that facilitates streaming audio.
Real Content with a Real Server
Why would you want to use a Real Server? If you are serving large or high-quality files, you may want to consider using the PNM protocol. HTTP is not quite as robust as PNM and HTTP is best suited for those serving smaller files or not insistent upon the absolute best sound quality.
Bringing 3D to the Web. Backers say a successful 3D programming standard could bring Web developers bold new navigation and rendering possibilities. [CNET News.com]
12:30:02 PM .
Microsoft readies small-business push. Later this year, the software colossus will test its business acumen--and its .Net strategy--with new software designed to help companies manage their customer relationships. [CNET News.com]
12:28:58 PM .
Custom Scroll Bars
Internet Explorer 5 added a new ability for web designers to take advantage of. That was the ability to customize and add colors to their scroll bars. This is done using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
You can enter the colors using regular names (such as green, black, red etc) or HEX values (such as# D9D9D9, #000000, etc). Also, you do NOT need to use all of the lines above.
If you're not familiar enough with creating stylesheets you can go to EchoEcho.Com and use the custom scroll bar generator to create the code you need to put into your page's <HEAD> section.
This only works in Internet Explorer 5+ but it will not affect the look of your site in earlier versions or other browser such as Netscape.
Adjusting your site for different Screen Resolutions
Have you ever spent hours trying to get your site to look just right and then viewed it on another PC at a different screen resolution? If I design a site, I want to be sure that it stays the way I wanted it to look no matter what screen resolution the visitor is using. How do you accomplish this?
Tables.
Tables can be a web designer's best friend when it comes to achieving the perfect look. If you just want to make sure your site fits in all browsers you can set up a table set to 100% width and then put your content inside of it. This will insure that it expands and grows to the width of the user's browser no matter what screen resolution they have.
If you want to be sure that your site stays the same in all screen resolutions then you would use tables and cells locked at a specific number of pixels to keep things from distorting.
A few years ago it was good practice to always design for the most commonly used screen resolution - 640x480 but these days, most PCs come pre-set up for screen resolutions of 800x600. One tip when using tables set to a specific number of pixels is to remeber to take into account that you don't have the full height and width of the browser to take advantage of. You have to account for the scroll bars, menu bars, tool bars etc. For example, at 640x480 you may want to set your table to a width of 595.
An alternate way of doing this is to set up different pages and use a screen redirect script to redirect your users depending on their browser settings.
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