by Joyce Kohl
March 20, 1999
[NOTE: This tip assumes you have some expertise to accomplish the goal of collecting files, creating directories, archiving a group of files, and moving them to a storage media. Please do not ask me for assistance. I do not have the time or training to teach others how to use Windows or the programs I mention here.]
Have you purchased third party themes for FrontPage (FP), or downloaded some of the freebies, or perhaps decided to switch from FP to another HTML editor, then wondered how you could use the graphics and other files outside of FrontPage? Whenever a theme is installed, it is automatically available inside FP to apply to a set of Web pages, but until the pages are published, the full set of graphics, CSS files, etc., are not separately available. At least not any place I could find them, and I looked in every single directory created by FP.
Some Info
Each theme I've purchased is a program file. That is, it's an executable file with an .EXE
extension, which looks for and installs itself into FrontPage. This tip is how I figured
out a way to extract the images, publish the pages to another "harvesting"
directory, archive them, then be able to use each theme without using FP.
There may be a better way; I haven't found it yet. This works easily and quickly.
Before You Begin
First, of course, you'll need to have FP installed, and at have at least one set of pages
created. The tutorial is ideal to work with as there are a minimum number of pages making
the publication of the pages fast and in turn allowing you to quickly collect each set of
files for each theme applied to them.
Second, you need a utility such as PowerDesk 98 [see my review of it HERE] to visually see the files, to tag them for archiving, and them move the archived (compressed/zipped) file to another location.
Third, you need to have some backup media ready so you can store your harvest of themes.
Launch FrontPage
Select any small set of pages to work with, such as the ones created when you go through
the tutorial, then from FrontPage Explorer click on the themes icon. Select the theme you
wish to apply. The following partial screenshot shows one of the themes I purchased and
from which I collected the image files to use on my yorkies.com Website:
Publish
Once the theme has been applied, then from select File, Publish FrontPage Web:
A dialog box will pop up, select the place to publish. If the default shown isn't correct, then click on the More Webs button. I created a new directory using some &&& so that my directory is either listed first or near the top of my directory listing. Important: Make sure BOTH boxes are UNCHECKED, then click OK. Wait until FP has completed the publication, then move on to the next step.
Find the Files
Launch whichever utility you can use for this purpose. I launched my favorite, PowerDesk
98, clicked on the directory where I published the pages, cursored down to themes, and
there were all the files needed for the pages.
Each time you publish with a different theme, the theme directory's name will change accordingly.
Selecting and Archiving
Select all the files, or only the images. I selected all of them by first clicking
(highlighting) one of the files, then from the toolbar, I chose Edit/Select All.
You don't want the FP specific subdirectory, _vti_cnf, in your archive, so depress and hold your control key, then deselect (take the highlight off) it.
Select Archive/Zip. Take the default filename or change it.
Moving Archived Theme
If you're collecting/harvesting several themes like I did, create a special directory for
moving your archives to temporarily. You'll move these to storage media later. If you're
only doing one theme, then you'll want to move it right away.
Highlight the zipped file:
Select File/Move to...:
Move to a temporary storage folder:
Folder of Harvested Themes
Repeat the process of selecting a theme in FP, publishing, then archiving each theme. You
don't need to delete the files from the published theme directory because FP will
overwrite them automatically, changing the theme name accordingly.
When finished collecting theme files, simply highlight the temporary publishing directory, and delete it and all the subdirectories created by FP. Then move or copy the archived themes to your choice of media. I moved mine to an Iomega Zip Disk.
List of themes I collected in my temporary directory:
Using the Files
When you wish to use the theme images, unarchive/unzip/decompress to a temporary
directory. Then rename each file to more meaningful names.
Creating your Web pages using FP themes CAN be done with any HTML editor - or manually.
Conclusion
Need is often the cause for some of the strange things I learn to do. Not being able to
use FrontPage after I had created over 100 pages for a Website [don't ask!], I found this
way to collect the images, and to efficiently use most of them with another HTML editor.
Of course I lost hover buttons, etc., and had to edit each page again, but it IS possible
to use the themes.
Recently I received an email notification from the Webmaster of a site where I had purchased themes. It was closing, and offering customers an 80% discount for purchasing FP themes. I rushed to the site, grabbed them, then began the process to harvest the files inside each theme.
Maybe you'd like to use your themes without FP, too.
Copyright © 1999