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Developing an Internet presence with Microsoft® Publisher 97
As you start up your business, one of the quickest and cheapest ways to promote it is by using the Internet. Microsoft offers two dedicated applications for Web publishing that can help you gain the edge over your competitors.
When you've got a company to run, building your own Internet Site may not seem a priority. But, if you're not on the Internet, your competitors most certainly are, and if they're not, they soon will be.
The Internet is rapidly becoming a global Yellow Pages, and it isn't only for large, mainstream corporations.
There are several ways to establish a Web presence and it needn't be expensive or time consuming.
Below, we'll take a look at two of the products Microsoft has for differing levels of Web presence. You'll find that getting your entry into the Web doesn't require a PhD in computing or an army of expensive technicians.
Microsoft® Publisher 97
One way of looking at an Internet Web site is as an efficient way of distributing your desktop publishing (DTP) output advertising, brochures and newsletters to a considerably wider audience. To help with this, Microsoft Publisher 97 extends the easy-to-use DTP system of Publisher 95 to create your very own, personalised Web site. By publishing on the Internet, you're no longer constrained by the conventional format of the printed medium.Using Publisher 97, you work in 'frames' on a page. Each frame can contain standard items such as text, tables or pictures. You can make text in frames flow around picture objects and so on, but you can also insert 'hot spots' onto images hyperlinks to other items to give your material a more dynamic look and feel.
Publisher 97 also has an extensive set of Wizards, giving you the opportunity to create anything from standard letters or brochures that you can print to a full-featured Web site. The Wizards are very easy to use, being designed for people who want to design and publish rather than program a computer. In particular, the Web Site Wizard will take you through all the steps necessary to create your own Web site. When you've finally completed your Web site to your satisfaction, you can then preview your creation.
Finally, all you need to do to upload your new site to the Internet is select 'Publish to Web' on the File menu. Publisher 97 then allows you to transfer your new Web site to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) of your choice.
All in all, creating and publishing your own Web site couldn't be easier than with Microsoft Publisher 97. All you really have to do is provide the material and find an ISP that provides space for your Web pages. Publisher does the rest.
Microsoft® FrontPage
FrontPage 1.1 is Microsoft's flagship Web authoring and management tool, designed to handle the largest Web site. Initially, you might wonder why anyone would need something other than Publisher 97. The answer lies in management and control. If the number of pages on your Web site goes beyond a few dozen or they are changed frequently, then you will almost certainly need some help in looking after your site.Your Web site is the first impression that many people will have of your company (and if it's poorly designed and managed with broken links and indifferent material, it may well be their last). The site is like your company's sales brochure; it pays to have a professional-looking product that sells your company to new and prospective clients.
We'll focus on two of the main components in FrontPage. First, there's the FrontPage Explorer which gives both a hierarchical and a graphical view of how your Web is constructed. All Web sites can be viewed as a set of pages and embedded images which are connected to other pages. But in anything beyond the simplest of Web sites, it can be very difficult; for example, seeing which Web pages are using a particular graphic image. FrontPage Explorer solves this problem by taking a hierarchical view, letting you see which Web page components graphics, hypertext links and email identifiers are used by any page. FrontPage Explorer also displays links between pages graphically so that you can visualise relations between pages. Clicking on a page or image lets you make edits using FrontPage's second major component, the FrontPage Editor.
The FrontPage Editor is a full-featured HTML page editor designed to help you create attractive and eye-catching Web pages. On the straightforward HTML editing side, you can add various fonts, lists, bullet points, directories and menus and insert images and files into pages. There are also facilities for adding more advanced objects radio buttons, text boxes, drop down menus and so on to your HTML page.
These two main components, together with the administration and security facilities of Microsoft FrontPage, ensure that you won't find a better or more powerful product for Web building whether your Web has only a few tens of pages or many hundreds.