Microsoft FrontPage v1.1 Beta 1

This document is designed to answer the most frequently asked questions about Microsoft FrontPage. By reading this before you install FrontPage 1.1 Beta 1, we think you will have a better understanding of the product which will enable you to utilize the capabilities of FrontPage to the fullest.

Read on and learn why FrontPage is the easiest and fastest way to create a professional looking web site.

Q. What is a Web Server and why do I need it to work with FrontPage?
A. In order to make HTML pages or Webs to work they need to be on a running server. That server could be out on the Internet, it could be somewhere on your LAN, or it could just be a program running on your own PC.
FrontPage is a Client/Server application for creating World Wide Web and intranet sites. To make this easy for you, FrontPage offers:

• a full featured client which will allow you to easily create and edit web sites
• a set of Server Extensions for the most popular World Wide Web Servers
• a Personal Web Server for you to use when authoring a web on your own PC
  

Q. What if I don't have a Web Server?
A. Now that you have FrontPage, you have a Personal Web Server! If you want to evaluate FrontPage on your own PC, or would like to set up FrontPage as a small Local Area Network web server, you can use the Personal Web Server which comes with the product.
FrontPage 1.1 will automatically install the Personal Web Server during a Typical installation, and, when present on your system, the Personal Web Server will automatically start when you select any command that requires it from the FrontPage Explorer or FrontPage editor.

Q. What if I already have access to a Web Server?
A. In order to get full functionality from FrontPage, your server will need to have our Server Extensions installed. FrontPage comes with Extensions for the most popular Web Servers. Check out our current list of Server Extensions. If your server software/server operating system is on this list, then you can download and install the server extensions.

Q. If I have existing content created with FrontPage 1.0, how should I install FrontPage 1.1 Beta 1?
A. To preserve your current content, during your installation select to Upgrade the Personal Web Server as opposed to installing a new one. Once the setup routine is complete, start the FrontPage 1.1 Server Administrator, select the port which the old server was on (the default is 80), and click the Upgrade button. This will successfully upgrade your old server to the new FrontPage 1.1 Personal Web Server and preserve all your existing content.

Q. I want to publish my FrontPage web on the World Wide Web - how do I do this?
A. You can use FrontPage to publish professional web sites on the World Wide Web. In order to get full functionality from the product, you will need to use an Internet Service Provider that has FrontPage extensions installed.

Q. FrontPage tells me "There is no server on Port 80 at <servername>", where <servername> is the machine you are trying to open a file or a web from. How do I fix this?
A. This indicates that there is no web server running on port 80 on the machine you are attempting to open the page from. Usually you will only see this under one of three conditions, each with its own remedy:

• You are attempting to open a page on another machine which does not have a web server running or has a server running that does not have the FrontPage Server Extensions installed.
• Contact the administrator of the remote machine (or go there yourself if appropriate) and check if the web server is running and if the FrontPage Server Extensions were installed to it. If the remote server is a FrontPage Personal Web Server, confirm that the extensions were installed and that the server is running.
• <servername> is your own PC and you chose a custom installation type and did not choose to install the Personal Web Server and/or the Server Extensions.
• Re-run the installation program and install the Server Extensions and the Personal Web Server.
• <servername> is your own PC and you have opened the FrontPage Editor, selected Open Location from the file menu, and specified a URL for a file on <servername>.
• The beauty of FrontPage is that it allows you to treat webs as entire units. When you launch the FrontPage Editor alone, it enables you to edit a single file at a time. In order for the FrontPage Editor to see that file using the World Wide Web (even if it is on your own machine), a web server needs to be running there. In order to facilitate using FrontPage Editor as a straight HTML Editor, we do not automatically start the Personal Web Server when you start the FrontPage Editor. You have several options.
  
  The best option is to make a habit of starting your FrontPage authoring sessions from the FrontPage Explorer rather than the FrontPage Editor. Another is to edit the file using direct disk access rather than HTTP. You would do this by selecting Open File and/or Save As … As File from within the FrontPage Editor. A third is to use the icon in your Windows95 Start Menu or your NT Program Manager to start the Personal Web Server.
  

Q. How can I change the port for the Personal Web Server?
A. Port 80 is reserved for HTTP, which is the World Wide Web protocol. This means that web servers listen to port 80 (by default) for requests from web browsers. If you want your server to run on a different port, follow these instructions:

1. Run the FrontPage Server Administrator and click "Uninstall." to remove the FrontPage Server Extensions.

2. Open the httpd.cnf file in a text editor and change the PORT = line to reflect the new port number. Save the changes.

3. Start the web server, run the Server Administrator and reinstall the extensions by clicking on the "Install" button.

Note: The non-standard or unusual port number you specify needs to be greater than 1024 as those numbers under 1024 are reserved for well-known services.

Q. How can I import existing Microsoft Office documents, HTML pages and/or images into my web?
A. For Microsoft Office documents, HTML pages, or images, use the File-> Import menu option in the FrontPageExplorer to import the existing files into your current web.

The Microsoft Office documents will automatically prompt the Internet Assistant user if they would like to open the file or save it at browse time. If the user chooses open, the appropriate Microsoft Office application will be launched.

Q. How can I convert an existing web to a web with FrontPage Server Extensions?
A. Download the proper FrontPage Server Extensions and have your server administrator follow the instructions in the text file that comes with the extensions.

Q. How can I move my existing webs from a server that does not have the FrontPage Server Extensions installed to one that does?
A. Copy or FTP the files or directories into the FrontPage extended server's content area. To create separate subwebs, open the FrontPage Explorer, create a new web on the server (this creates a folder in the server's content directory), move or copy your files into the new folder. Make sure that CGI scripts have read/write access to the new files and directories. These pages will be visible the next time you run the FrontPage Explorer. NOTE: If FrontPage Explorer is running when you do this, click Refresh on the View menu or click Recalculate Links on the Tools menu.

Q. How do I uninstall FrontPage 1.1 Beta 1?
A. Use the Windows95 Control Panel to Add-Remove Programs. Select FrontPage 1.1 in the list and click the Add/Remove button.

Q. Where do I go for more information?
The Microsoft Knowledge Base is available to you for detailed information on all Microsoft Products.

Q. What are the key benefits of FrontPage?
A. FrontPage eliminates programming tasks, and simplifies the creation, deployment, and ongoing management of web sites enabling a broader group of individuals than ever before to create and maintain web sites. Interactive functions called WebBot components can be added immediately without any programming.
Users whose web sites are housed in another location can edit content without having to be physically on the computer running the web server. This is possible because of the FrontPage client/server architecture which provides support for remote authoring, development and management.
Managing web sites is easy with the FrontPage Explorer which provides a visual interface that keeps track of links and pages within a web site. Collaborative development between several departments, multi-user authoring through shared to-do lists and conflict detection are all easy to accomplish with FrontPage as well.
Users can create a site on their own personal computer and easily move it to a departmental UNIX or NT web server -- without having to know the underlying structure -- all because the FrontPage architecture is open. You will not be locked in to one vendor because FrontPage supports all standards-based browsers, and all leading web servers.

Q. Realistically, how much programming expertise is necessary to effectively use FrontPage?
A. None. FrontPage masks programming chores, so the end-user need not know HTML, Perl, Tcl, or other scripting languages. Anyone from a programmer to a creative designer can develop a compelling, interactive web site with FrontPage.

Q. What if I've already started work on my web site?
A. You're in luck! If you already have scripts that work, you can easily incorporate them into a FrontPage-developed web site.

Q. What are FrontPage Wizards?
A .FrontPage Wizards are programs that prompt a user for information and generate a web site or page. These dialog-driven procedures dramatically reduce the time it takes to create a web site. FrontPage includes several wizards for common types of sites, plus over twenty page templates.

Q. What are WebBot components?
A. WebBot components, offer drop-in interactive functionality, greatly speeding up and simplifying the development process. FrontPage ships with twelve built-in WebBot components enabling web designers to add such advanced interactive capabilities as discussion groups, full-text search, surveys, and registration forms to a web site with just a few mouse clicks. WebBot components eliminate the need to write custom scripts or add complicated HTML commands to achieve the same results.

Q. Can I create "hot spots"?
A. Easily! By simply drawing around an image with the clickable image editor, you can create a "hot spot" in seconds -- there is no programming involved. And the hot spot works no matter what web server you copy your web to, as long as the server is running the FrontPage Server Extensions.

Q. What can you say about security and FrontPage?
A. Microsoft ensures privacy by encrypting all communication between FrontPage at remote development sites and FrontPage. In addition, proxy servers are fully supported -- thereby enabling FrontPage clients to communicate through corporate firewalls.

Q. How customizable is FrontPage?
A. FrontPage provides a wide range of flexibility and control over most common features within a web site. For those wishing to provide unique capabilities in the form of scripts or nonstandard HTML, FrontPage provides a mechanism to incorporate them.

Q. Every vendor today claims that their product is "open." What does that mean to FrontPage?
A. FrontPage is committed to providing products that do not lock customers into proprietary or nonstandard applications, or services including browsers, servers, computing platforms and operating systems. In addition, FrontPage supports open standards through IETF and its membership in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The company believes that only by openness and interoperability can the Internet-based infrastructure reach its full growth potential, clearly the goal for all providers of Internet-based products.

Q. Maintaining a web site and keeping it current with up-to-date information can be time consuming. How does FrontPage help with web site maintenance?
A. Web site administrators have been known to go so far as to lay index cards on the floor or sticky notes on the wall to provide a visual view of their site's layout. The visual nature of FrontPage eliminates the need for manual layouts. Outline and graphical views of the site are provided within FrontPage in a display that will look familiar to anyone that has used Windows 95.
Web sites must also be continuously updated to keep a loyal base of followers. Because many web servers are geographically removed from the author, either because they are hosted at a service bureau or the organization is large, the update process can be a major investment in time. FrontPage allows administrators and authors to be remote from the Web server, greatly simplifying the logistics of managing remote development.
Finally, this separation of administration and authoring tools enables work to be performed on the platform best suited for the task at hand. Authoring can occur on a PC with the Windows 95 operating system, for instance, while production web servers reside on Windows NT or UNIX servers.

Q. What is FrontPage doing about database access functionality?
A. Today, database access is usually accomplished through integration of scripts and database APIs. Existing database access schemes can be used within FrontPage-developed web sites. We are exploring a number of relationships and technologies that will bring the same ease of use, convenience, and flexibility to database access that FrontPage accomplishes out of the box.

Q. How compatible is FrontPage with currently available web browsers?
A. Web services developed using FrontPage are fully browsable by all industry standards-compliant browsers, including Mosaic clients, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic, Spyglass Mosaic, and Netscape Navigator from Netscape.

Q. How does FrontPage handle file imports/conversion?
Much of the content desirable for inclusion within a web site exists in another form. To simplify the process of integrating that content, FrontPage automatically converts RTF and text files to HTML. Additionally, a large variety of image formats, including TIFF, BMP, Windows Metafiles, MacPaint, Microsoft Paint, WordPerfect raster files, SUN raster files, EPS, and PICT are converted to GIF or JPEG. FrontPage supports selectable transparency for GIFs.

Q. Does FrontPage support VRML?
A. Links to VRML documents can exist within a FrontPage-developed web site. However, FrontPage does not provide support for the creation of VRML documents.

Q. How does FrontPage handle dangling page links?
A. FrontPage provides link verification function to determine if a link is valid.

Q. Is online help provided?
A. Yes. FrontPage provides comprehensive context-sensitive help, as well as an online tutorial.

Q. Can I write my own Web Wizards?
A. FrontPage will be providing a Developers' Kit for those wanting to write Web Wizards; it will be available later this year.

Q. Can I write my own WebBot components?
A. FrontPage will be providing a Developers' Kit for those wanting to write their own WebBot components in Version 1.1 of FrontPage, due out in early 1996.

Q. When is the Macintosh version coming out?
A. We are planning to release a Macintosh version of FrontPage by the end of 1996.

Q. Do you support all Netscape and Microsoft extensions to the HTML standard?
A. We support many of them, including blinking text.