FrontPage 2000: The Complete Reference [Paperback]

Martin Matthews (Author), Erik B. Poulsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 007211939X | ISBN-13: 978-0072119398

FrontPage 2000 Web Builder's Bible. Whetehr you're a Web design beginner or a seasoned pro, Frontpage 2000: The Complete Reference, by Martin Matthews and Erik Poulsen, gives you a total toolchest for maximizing Microsoft's award-winning Website creation and management tool. You get up-to-date techniques and little-known secrets for using all of its advanced features, including the fast-action know-how to: Use Wizard and Components to handle Website mechanics; Create sizzling graphics special effects, and animated GIF's with Image Composer; Encourage Website traffic with interactive applets, forms, and scripts; Protect your site and visitors with fail-safe, maximum security features; Understand and maximize HTML, DHTML and XML; Design database-driven Web sites with ADO and OLE-DB; Implement Active Server Page technology; Import and integrate Office and other files; And much more.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

FrontPage 2000: The Complete Reference contains screen shots and interface labels that explain, completely, the tools Web developers have available to them when using FrontPage 2000. Such elements are important parts of any software-documentation effort. But the authors of this book go beyond mere descriptions, explaining how to use the tools to achieve the kinds of effects you want on your Web sites. They're like scientists describing what they see, but also like engineers setting out to accomplish practical tasks.

Many FrontPage 2000 books mistakenly assume that the latest version of Microsoft's editor for Web sites is a lot like its predecessors: big, slow, and not well-suited to serious Web publishing efforts. That's not the case and the authors know this, explaining with great clarity how to use all of FrontPage 2000's features.

The book includes a lot of procedures, so if you're looking to find out how to enable Active Server Pages (ASP) or draw a table, you'll have no trouble finding specific steps to follow. Coverage of ASP, databases, and other aspects of dynamic site creation is particularly strong here. Sticking to their follow-this-procedure method, the authors explain how to collect data from a Web form and store it in a database, as well as demonstrating the construction of pages from database contents on the fly--a useful technique for such applications as catalogs and directories. This is an excellent resource for FrontPage 2000 users. --David Wall

Topics covered: Web site creation with Microsoft FrontPage 2000. Elementary coverage includes the basics of templates, layout, graphics, text, hyperlinks, and other fundamental design elements. Advanced coverage includes database connectivity, dynamic page generation, Dynamic HTML (DHTML), ActiveX controls, and the basics of electronic commerce. In addition to FrontPage coverage, there's information on Image Composer and PhotoDraw.

From the Back Cover

The Ultimate Guide to the #1 Web Site Creation Tool!

Develop robust, high-impact Web sites and applications with FrontPage 2000! Best-selling author, Martin Matthews, and high-profile Web designer, Erik Poulsen, show you how to use all of FrontPage 2000's features through easy-to-understand explanations and interactive exercises.

Learn to lay out your site, format content, and add hyperlinks, special effects, and interactive components. Plus, you'll get clear instructions on how to extend and enhance FrontPage using HTML, Dynamic HTML, XML, Active Server Pages, ActiveX controls, Java applets, and much more. FrontPage 2000: The Complete Reference will help you turn your vision of a show-stopping Web site into reality-in no time!

Inside, you'll find out how to:

• Create a professional-quality Web site or revamp an existing site following clear, step-by-step instructions
• Add forms, tables, frames, and multimedia to your site
• Minimize routine tasks with Wizards, templates, themes, and shared borders
• Add interactive and animated features to your site using Dynamic HTML, FrontPage interactive components, ActiveX controls, and Java applets
• Create content formatted just the way you want using FrontPage's WYSIWYG editor with cascading style sheets and tables within tables
• Set up database-driven Web sites using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and OLE-DB
• Monitor your site's performance, navigation, and task status at a glance from the new Reports view
• Set up intranet and e-commerce sites using tips and examples from existing sites

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Product Details

• Paperback: 952 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 007211939X
• ISBN-13: 978-0072119398
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,575,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

162 of 163 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly useful, June 2, 2000

By 

Geoffrey Brown (Taconic, CT United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: FrontPage 2000: The Complete Reference (Paperback)

I had built a number of web sites using native HTML and one using FP2000 intuitively, without any books to follow. My impression of FP2000 at that time was that it was a little bit like Geocities -- quick and dirty, easy templates, that's it.

Then, a client insisted that I build his business site using FP2000. At that point, I bought this book and started using it. The book was a MAJOR eye-opener about the capabilities of FP2000, and I was like a kid in a candy store while building that site -- largely because of this book!

The book is easy to read (I actually read it cover-to-cover, all 930 pages), although there is definitely a major jump in difficulty when the section on ASP begins.

There's no doubt in my mind that this book is worth every one of the five stars I awarded it. The places where I had minor problems with it were trivial compared with the help it offered. To show how trivial they were, here were my MAJOR problems with the book: (1)I found the discussions of IP addressing (127.0.0.n and 10.0.0.n on pages 815 and 891) somewhat contradictory. (2)I use a lot of Adobe Acrobat stuff on my sites, and was disappointed not to see even an index entry for that extremely common medium. In fact, it would have been nice if they had acknowledged more of the sources of content that many, many people use -- like Paint Shop Pro. (3) It was a little annoying that all books recommended for further reading were those published by McGraw Hill -- even when a book published by, say, O'Reilly is THE authoritative book on a subject. (However, that's typically not the author's fault, usually it's the fault of a publisher who gets a little greedy.)

Summary: if you're thinking about building a web site in FP2000, you should get this book. If you build web sites and you think FP2000 isn't worth considering for building serious web sites, you REALLY should get this book. The book, and my experience with it, actually convinced me to convert some of the native HTML sites I built and still maintain to FP2000 to make the maintenance task easier.

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Front Page 2000", WHAT A BOOK!, February 19, 2000

By 

Ken Lorenzo - See all my reviews

This review is from: FrontPage 2000: The Complete Reference (Paperback)

Front Page 2000 The Complete Reference, is not just a reference book. I am starting to build up my domain name Compufly.com So I decided to get the book. The first day I read 287 pages of it (very VERY unlike me) I am computer literate person with the most basic skills of web publishing and this book is really going to do a lot for me. Everything that I could ever question about FP2000 is in here. I highly reccomend this book.

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lacking in some key areas, September 3, 2000

By 

Mark Olwick "Research-aholic" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: FrontPage 2000: The Complete Reference (Paperback)

I'm a beginning user of Front Page 2000, and was having some problems filling in the gaps of Microsoft's official publications, so I bought this book. While somewhat comprehensive, there are some key areas that are lacking.

1. There is no section, and virtually no mention of cross-browser compatibility. This was a significant problem I was having, as my pages looked fine to me, but AOL & Netscape users were seeing crazy fonts, strange tables, etc. This book assumes that everyone uses Internet Explorer.

2. It just skims the surface of the intricacies of using tables, which are used extensively in web pages.

3. I found the format somewhat annoying, in that anytime you looked up a feature, instead of just explaining how it works in detail, it makes you build a web page using that feature in order to see it. This is very time consuming when you're just looking for simple answers.

4. The "Free CD of software" is pretty much worthless. All it contains is free and shareware easily found on the web, and in more currrent versions.

5. Some simple things are just simply missing. I wanted to know how to make thumbnails of my photos using Front Page's auto-thumbnail feature. I could find no mention of this anywhere in the index or TOC. It may be in this thick volume somewhere, but I could never find it.

It does contain a ton of information, just not as "Complete" a reference as I would have hoped.