What is a link bar?What is a link bar?
A link bar is a set of hyperlinks used for navigating a web site. For example, a typical link bar might have hyperlinks to the web site's home page and its main pages:
You can display a link bar on every page in your web site so that your site visitors can always get to the web site's main pages quickly and easily.
Link bars can use buttons or text hyperlinks. For example, the link bar above can also be displayed as text:
You can create a set of hyperlinks to use for navigation yourself — that is, you can create your own set of buttons and link them to the relevant pages within your web site and outside it, and repeat this on each page where you want a link bar. You can also choose to set up the navigation structure of your web site, and then let Microsoft FrontPage create the link bars for you. FrontPage maintains the link bars it creates; if you move or add a page, FrontPage updates (recalculates the hyperlinks in) the link bar accordingly.
Note FrontPage can generate link bars only when you are working within a web site, rather than with separate pages.
Types of link bars
Note You can add and view any type of link bar when you publish to a disk-based web site. However, when you publish to a Web server, in order to be able to add a custom link bar or a link bar with back and next links, your Web server must have Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 or SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft installed.
A custom link bar
When you add a custom link bar, you can add any of the pages within your web site as well as external pages. You can set this link bar up in any way you want, and you can add and remove pages from it at any time.
A link bar with back and next links
When you add a link bar with back and next links, FrontPage looks at the navigation structure of your web site in order to determine which page will be linked to when your site visitor clicks the Back link, and which one will be linked to when your visitor clicks the Next link.
In addition to these choices for a link bar, you can also include hyperlinks to the web site's home page and/or to the parent of the current page, and you can also link to external web pages.
A link bar based on the navigation structure of your web site
In order to add a link bar based on the navigation structure of your web site, you must first set up that navigation structure. The navigation structure determines which hyperlinks to put on the link bar, and the page titles determine the labels for the hyperlinks.
You can create a navigation structure for your web site by organizing pages in Navigation view. This navigation structure shows how pages in your web site are related to each other and provides FrontPage with a way to set up link bars. Then, when you add link bars based on the navigation structure of your web site, FrontPage sets up each link bar according to this structure.
The following example shows the structure of a web site:
The following is an explanation of the relationships between these pages:
Home page The first page added to a navigation structure, typically named Default.htm or Index.htm, and is indicated by 
. In this example, Home is the home page.
Global-level pages These are at the same level as — but do not include — the home page. In this example, the top-level page is Contacts.
Parent-level pages The parent page of another page, plus pages that are directly connected to the parent page on the same level. In this example, the parent-level pages for What's New are Home (the parent page), and Contacts.
Child-level pages Pages directly below another page. In this example, Home has three child pages (What's New, Products, and Services), Contact Us has one child page (Jobs), and Products has two child pages (Search and Ordering).
Same-level pages Pages that are on the same level in the structure and have the same parent page. In this example, What's New, Products, and Services are same-level pages, but Jobs is not because it has a different parent page. Search and Ordering are also same-level pages.
Back and next pages The structure for the back and next pages is determined by the order of pages in Navigation view. In this example, if Products is the page to which you are adding the link bar, the Next link would direct the site visitor to Services and the Back link would direct the site visitor to What's New.
When you add a link bar based on the navigation structure to a page, you choose which hyperlinks you want to display. These hyperlinks are relative to the position of the page in the navigation structure.
When the link bar is placed on the 
page, the link bar will include hyperlinks to 
pages. The home page is indicated by 
.
Same-level link bar |
Parent-level link bar |
Child pages of the home page (in this case, same as the parent-level) |
Top-level link bar |
Child-level link bar |
Back and Next link bar |
In addition to these choices for a link bar, you can also include hyperlinks to the web site's home page and/or to the parent of the current page.
If you select navigation hyperlinks that are not relevant to the current page (for instance, you add a top-level link bar, but your web site has no top-level pages other than the home page), the link bar will not be displayed in a Web browser. You will, however, see a placeholder for the link bar while you are editing the page.
Setting the style of link bars
You have several options in how you want your link bars to appear:
Using link bars within shared borders
A shared border is a region that is common to one or more pages in a web site. Use shared borders to place the same content on multiple pages in one step, rather than editing each page.
You can also use link bars inside shared borders. However, a link bar is relative to each page — a link bar might seem useful when you view it from one page, but you might not like the selection of hyperlinks when you view the link bar from a different page. Since a link bar inside a shared border has the same settings for all pages using the shared border, you must be careful how you set up the link bar.