FrontPage components are built-in FrontPage objects that are evaluated and executed when an author saves a page or, in some cases, when a user browses to the page. FrontPage components generate HTML, or, in some cases, client-side or server-side script code. Using the FrontPage SDK (available on the FrontPage 98 CD-ROM) users can add their own FrontPage components.
Run-time components expand dynamically when the page containing the component is fetched by a browser, or for Form handler components when a form is submitted. This is similar to a CGI script running on the server. Authoring-time components expand only when the page is saved, and not when the page is fetched by a browser.
Component |
Type |
Purpose |
| Banner Ad Manager | Authoring-time | Allows images to be automatically displayed and rotated in sequence. Users can click the images to follow a hyperlink. |
| Comment | Authoring-time | Text that authors can view in the FrontPage Editor but that will not be displayed by a Web browser, similarly to "hidden text" in a word processor. Comment text appears purple in the FrontPage Editor and retains the character-size and other attributes of the current paragraph style. Comments are particularly useful for instructions embedded in templates. |
| Confirmation Field | Run-time | Includes the values of fields in a form on the form’s confirmation page. |
| Default Form Handler (also called Save Results component) | Run-time | Appends the contents of a form to a file on the server in any of eight formats (suitable for importing into databases, feeding into a mail merge with Microsoft Word, viewing in a text editor, viewing in a web browser, etc.). This form handler can also be configured to e-mail the form’s contents. |
| Discussion | Run-time | Creates a threaded discussion group. |
| Hit Counter | Run-time | Monitors and displays the number of visits a page has received. |
| Hover Button | Authoring-time | A button on a Web page that contains an animation that is activated when the mouse moves over the button or is clicked on the button. |
| Include Page | Authoring-time | Replaced with the contents of a page in the FrontPage web. If the included page changes, it is re-included. Note that the Include Page component is not the same as a server-side include. Server-side includes dynamically include pages when the page is fetched. The Include Page Component only updates the included data when the page is saved. |
| Insert HTML | Authoring-time | Allows the author to enter (and preserve) HTML tags. Useful for inserting tags that are not recognized by the FrontPage Editor. |
| Marquee | Authoring-time | Creates a horizontal scrolling text window. |
| Page Banner | Authoring-time | Creates a banner across the page with the page’s title. Text or images are used, based on the FrontPage theme selected for the web. |
| Registration | Run-time | Allows end-users to add themselves to the list of users permitted to browse a protected web by registering a username and password. |
| Scheduled Image | Authoring-time | Similar to the Scheduled Include FrontPage component, except that only an image is included. |
| Scheduled Include | Authoring-time | Similar to an Include Page component, but the inclusion is only effective during a specified time period, before and after which the inclusion is automatically disabled (or, optionally, a different page is included). |
| Search | Run-time | Performs a full-text search over all pages in a web, or over all messages in a discussion group. |
| Substitution | Authoring-time | Performs macro substitutions, allowing the values of data items (such as a company’s address) to be centralized for easy updating. |
| Table of Contents | Authoring-time | Displays a complete outline of all pages in a web, and optionally updates that outline whenever any page is added, deleted, or renamed within the web. |
| Timestamp | Authoring-time | Indicates when a page was last edited by an author or (optionally) when it was last automatically updated, in various date and time formats. |