Last Updated: May 29, 1997
We here at GO INSIDE have scored a scoop! Here and only here, our Microsoft Insider, will take your questions about FrontPage 97 and answer them in depth with vim and verve and a dash of panache!
Q. I have been running FrontPage 97 since beta and I have not had to much trouble with it until I upgraded my computer and added some drives. Drive letters changed including the one that FrontPage is installed on. Here is the problem I updated all the links to the files that I could and I also worked over the INI, but now when I go in to do a script and hit the script Wiz button I get a error; I think it is like "can't start or can't find..." Everything works great but the Wiz. Any help would be great.
Microsoft Insider: Whenever you change hard drive letters for your installed programs it's tempting to try to do a search/replace on "C:" and replace with "E:" or whatever new drive letter you're using rather than reinstalling your programs to the new drive letter. As you've experienced, though, there are usually at least a few things that get passed up. With Windows 95 and Win NT not only are INI files used, but so is the registry -- in fact, some Windows applications now eschew INI files entirely and write everything to the registry.
Before I continue, and I'm sure you've heard it before, but I feel compelled to remind you that Microsoft Technical Services highly discourages people from manually making changes to their Windows Registry and they will not provide support for a configuration who's registry has been edited manually.That said, let's tackle your issue.
The file that it's probably unable to find is the "fphtmop.dll" file that normally resides in the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft FrontPage\bin" folder. As with many settings for FrontPage and other applications the pointer to this file actually exists in the Windows registry and not in an INI file. So, what you need to do is check to see that the "fphtmop.dll" file still exists on your drives somewhere (preferably in the same folder as the other FrontPage binary files) then make sure the registry is pointing to it.
The "fphtmop.dll" file is a hidden file so be sure to view hidden files when you're looking for it. After locating the file, run "Regedit" from the Start / Run menu command and search for "fphtmop.dll". You should find a reference to it at the following key:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{686C6BC0-D935-11CF-A881-00C04FD71E42}\InprocServer
32]
In the right pane, right-click on "Default" select "Modify" then type in the path to the file's actual location. Click OK.
Assuming you've done everything correctly now when you launch the FrontPage Editor and try to use the Script Wizard it should work for you. By the way, the registry entry listed above is for Windows 95. Windows NT may use a slightly different entry name.
Keep in mind that the registry contains lots of other entries related to FrontPage so you may find yourself troubleshooting yet more issues you just haven't run into yet. Without trying to sound like Microsoft Technical Services, probably the best and safest course of action would be to simply reinstall FrontPage on the new drive, then re-import your webs into the new location.
Q. Let me explain what I did with FrontPage...
1. I imported some 250 files from a project where the bosses wanted to electrify / webify what was essentially a paper document. (A stupid idea, but they were paying.) At any rate when I finally starting getting all the proper hyper links in place the web view (both the listing and the picture) started to make sense. And I knew that any file in the list that was not connected to the developing tree needed a parent node. (I know it's a web not a tree, so read "any file in the list view that was not connected to the developing web was an orphan and needed an already connected page as a hyperlink." This was absolutely wonderful in untangling the mess I started with and is what sold me on FrontPage.
2. Then I get FrontPage 97 and start to develop my own site. Maybe my aging mind is going and I am getting as good a view as I had in FrontPage 1, but ... In web view the web only seems to want to go on connection either way. My site is quite hierarchical (though at the moment certain private portions are not connected to the base index.html) but I can see very little of the hierarchy on the RHS list. I seem to remember that in FrontPage 1 index.html was at the top of the list and everything hung neatly from it. Or have I been inhaling?
Microsoft Insider: I believe the issue is because the "home" page you've set up in FrontPage has a different name than the "default" page set up for your web server. For example, using Microsoft Personal Web Server administration you can change the "default" page to something like "home.html." If your home page in FrontPage is called "index.htm" the next time you load FrontPage and open your web you will not see the hierarchy in the "All Hyperlinks" file list view because it thinks that your default home page should be "home.html" and no such page exists in your FrontPage web. To fix this either change the default home page name in your server administration tool to match the home page name in FrontPage, or change the name of the default page in FrontPage to match the default for your web server. Once the two are in sync shut down FrontPage, restart and reload your web and you should see the little house icon reappear along with the hierarchy listed below it.
Q. I am attempting to edit a script (FrontPage_Form1_Validator) so that it will set a cookie when the validation of the form is complete. I have added the setCookie statement after the last field validation statement tests "true". When the html is uploaded to the server, it seems to eat my setCookie statement (it regenerates the original form validation script code). Is there a workaround for this? Where/how else can I successfully set a cookie?
Microsoft Insider: I need to understand whether you are taking the code that's generated from FrontPage's built-in validation feature and modifying it, or whether there's arbitrary script code (eg Insert / Script) being attached to a form. If it is the former, modifying FrontPage's built-in code, then the fact that FrontPage generates the original script code is by design. This is standard bot behavior -- FrontPage rebuilds a WebBot if it looks like the WebBot content has been corrupted or is in need of expansion. FrontPage will not modify arbitrary script code attached to a form via Insert / Script and/or hand-edits of the HTML as long as the form validation bot is not involved. You can use FrontPage to start writing the validation code as an example, but then do hand-edits on that code: You can take out the FrontPage and the