FrontPage 97 with Bonus Pack is an 
award winner!
October 7, 1996
Well, Microsoft's gone and done it again! They've set another new high watermark in the software world by creating the de facto industry standard for web creation and publishing: FrontPage 97 with Bonus Pack.
FrontPage 97
FrontPage 97 with Bonus Pack packs quite a punch! Microsoft hasn't only set this new standard with design panache and style, they've rolled up their sleeves, balled up a fist and punched it deeply into the heart of the web. They've achieved this milestone by improving upon the original FrontPage 1.1 and making FrontPage 97 with Bonus Pack a toolbox of added function, form and unimagined force for web designers.
By using FrontPage 97 with Bonus Pack, you can forget the present method of creating sites by hacking out strings of HTML code on a keyboard. With FrontPage 97, you can create new sites via mouse drag-and-drops and FrontPage 97 will do all the HTML code hacking for you. Even web design professionals will appreciate this new ease of use, because it lets them concentrate solely on the design and content of a site without having to worry about missing slash marks or perfect formatting.
Bonus Packs
There are four "bonus pack" parts to the new Microsoft FrontPage 97: Internet Explorer 3.0, Image Composer 1.0, Personal Web Server and a Thesaurus. These bonus features enhance the basic FrontPage 97 authoring and management package by helping ensure that you have a method -- from idea to finished online website -- for creation, delivery and publication. FrontPage 97 comes with the Bonus Pack - there isn't a "FrontPage 97" only version being sold, but for the purposes of this article, we'll refer to the entire "FrontPage 97 with Bonus Pack" sha-bang simply as... FrontPage 97.
Improved Program, Familiar Feel
Since FrontPage97 is part of the Microsoft Office 97 family of inter-applications, FrontPage 97 has a familiar look and feel to the way it works: It feels like I'm in Microsoft Word composing a letter while I'm designing text inside FrontPage 97. Since Notepad is the number one HMTL editor in the world, you'll be happy to know that FrontPage 97 now offers you hardcore HTML coders the ability to go directly to the code level and hand type in whatever HTML tags you desire. FrontPage 1.1 didn't easily allow you to edit raw HTML.
More Enhancements
There are other feature enhancements to FrontPage 97 not found in FrontPage 1.1. Let's examine them now:
- Easier Existing Web Import. There's a new "Existing Content" Wizard that makes is easy to bring existing websites into the world of FrontPage 97. Now you can take better advantage of your existing website design by adding, and then calling, the FrontPage 97 server extensions from the client side. Your ISP need not have the FrontPage 97 server extensions installed for your to use FrontPage 97 as your web design tool, but if your ISP does have those special FrontPage 97 server side extensions installed on their system, you'll be able to do many neat, complicated CGI feats without learning CGI! You'll use FrontPage 97 WebBots for creating these CGI actions. WebBots are pre-packaged client/server CGI interaction programs that give you the power to dynamically process live information (like forms and databases and discussion groups) on your site.
- True WYSIWYG editing. You'll create your website with "as is" formatting in real time. This will better help you immediately know what does and doesn't work on your site offline without having to go online to see how your site really looks.
- Setup is Simpler. You simply put the FrontPage 97 in your CD-ROM drive and let the setup routine run. There aren't any complicated messages boxes to wade through as there were in FrontPage 1.1.
- More Wizards and Templates. If you're a web designer and you need to get a site up and online quick-and-dirty -- use FrontPage 97 -- because the results will be clean and professional. If you're a first time web designer, using these expertly pre-designed templates and Wizards will let you concentrate on what you want to say and how you want to say it -- you won't have to worry about learning a new HTML tag or programming language because FrontPage 97 worries about that for you and handles it invisibly.
- Better Documentation. The flimsy Getting Started book that came with FrontPage 1.1 was a big problem I had learning to enjoy using that program. With the advent of FrontPage 97, the Getting Started documentation has become a thick and virile 250 page hardcopy, bound... manual! Now you can learn about everything FrontPage 97 can do for you in your own time, in your own space and at your own place away from your computer. There are 5 lessons, a detailed glossary, excellent index and an explanation and investigation of Frontpage 97 advanced programming themes and design issues. Let's hope the robust documentation for Microsoft FrontPage 97 is a harbinger of good things to come in the way of enhanced, indexed and fully detailed hardbound documentation for all Microsoft products.
- Easy Drag and Drop Features. Visual Basic Script, Java, ActiveX, JavaScript, WebBot Components, Netscape Plug-Ins and Secure Sockets Layer support can now all be dropped into your pages with ease.
Okay. Enough talk. Enough feature stats. Let me show you right now how simple it is to create a robust website from scratch with FrontPage 97.
Building a New Site
When you start up FrontPage 97 for the first time, you're presented with the action window below. I picked the "New FrontPage Web" Wizard.
Next, I had to choose what style of website I wanted FrontPage 97 to make for me. I decided to create a "Corporate Presence" website from scratch as you can see in the screenshot below. Please note that there are 16 "Wizard Steps" from start to finish in this process. I'll only pick a few of the more steps to screenshot for you here and now.
When FrontPage 97 asked me to pick an aesthetic look for my new corporate website, I decided to go with a conservative business design.
Take a look at the next image below. I did none of the linking. I didn't do any of this extensive mapping. I simply opened up my "DBG" (David Boles Gang!) website the moment the FrontPage 97 Wizard had finished creating it for me.
To hand code this HTML in Notepad would've taken me at least a day. By using the FrontPage 97 Wizard, I was started and finished in less than 7 minutes. I kid you not. SEVEN minutes from start to finish! Mind you that I'm not wholly finished in seven minutes, because I'll want to eye each page and customize it as I see fit; but for getting all the down and dirty hard coded relational links out of the way, FrontPage 97 can't be beat as your HTML hired hand.
Don't you love the graphical relational view of the website FrontPage 97 provides for you in the FrontPage 97 Explorer? It really gives you a deep and gratifying overview of how each piece of your site relates to the whole of your domain. You have a new and richer appreciation of how your site relates to itself with this clickable, highlighted, hotlinked peek into the innards of your FrontPage 97 authored site.
Another powerful tool Microsoft punches into FrontPage 97 is the Image Composer. This is Microsoft's first gambit into the high-tech, high stakes world of intensely sophisticated image design programs like PhotoShop... and Microsoft has done a fine job of cramming powerful features into a simple to use and friendly interface. Gee. Even the opening program splash for the Microsoft Image Composer is beautiful! Take a look.
The new SPRITE technology included in the Image Composer allows you to create several layers (via automatic alpha channels for each individual image) for your graphics. This feature lets you combine multiple graphics on top of one another to form a single, compound image you can see through (or not see through, or see through in varying degrees - the choice is wholly yours). The technology is quite is striking.
Animated GIFs are a breeze to create when you use Microsoft Image Composer.
Image Composer has over 500 effects and tools. You also get a great SPLINE tool so you can easily trim images by selecting points anywhere along a curve. In the example of the Image Composer in action below, I simply typed in some 20 point text and then pulled the text into a giant new dimension for an unusual effect.
Take a look at the next screenshot. You're spying a Press Release the FrontPage 97 Corporate Wizard created for me. I opened up the page in the FrontPage 97 Editor and took a screenshot for you so you could see how good it looks and it's never been touched by my human ham-hands! To edit this page, I'd simply click directly on the text I want to change and type in what I wanted to appear there instead. Here's a neat new FrontPage 97 feature: "Download Time" estimtates. Look in the lower right hand corner of the finished page screenshot and you'll see "0:00 at 28.8". That little information window is your key to striking a perfect balance between aesthetic and speed: FrontPage 97 lets you know precisely how long the page you've created will take to download at 28.8bps. This page will load very fast because it's mostly text.
(Note: Most of this page wouldn't need modification if I'd bothered to fill out every single piece of information in that 16 step Wizard FrontPage 97 asked me to provide.)
Creating and editing pages with FrontPage 97 is so easy you'll wondery why you waited so long to have this much fun publishing a homepage!
For a current list of Internet Service Providers who support FrontPage 97 server extensions, check out http://microsoft.saltmine.com/frontpage/wpp/list/ for all the details.