Inside the Microsoft Internet Explorer Suite you will find FrontPage Express, an HTML editor with a graphical user interface that is based on the full-featured FrontPage 97 (shortly 98). FrontPage Express has similar functionality to FrontPage 97, except for the editing of Frames, site management, image maps, proofing tools, active server pages, preview in browser, and most WebBot components. It has a true WYSIWYG interface, which enables you to edit and create pages without even glimpsing a line of HTML code, unless of course you really want or need to.

Click on the images to see more details on FrontPage Express, or choose a topic from the list below, or just read on down the page.

Wizards

The Wizard takes you step-by-step through the process of creating a personal home page. One of the best ways to see how FrontPage Express handles your information is to check the HTML code after the wizard has finished.

• Normal Page - Creates a Blank Web Page.

• Confirmation Form - Create a page to acknowledge receipt of user input from discussion, Form Result, or Registration forms.
  
• Form Page Wizard - Collect a form page by selecting the types of information you wish to collect. The wizard will take you through the page URL and Title, the type and amount of information you wish to receive input from, hierarchy, presentation and Output options.
  
• New Web View Folder - A web view page can be customised to have a different background, name and icon groupings. FrontPage Express even enables you to insert Internet Mail and News and other Windows Shell components in Folders.
  
• Personal Home Page - Create a Home Page customised to your specifications in minutes.
  
• Survey Form - Create a form to collect information from your web site or home page visitors, and store it in a file on your web server.

Features

FrontPage Express incorporates all the features you'd expect of an HTML package. However, there are some 'extras' that only appear in FrontPage Express and are very easy to take advantage of.

• Table Tool - located in the toolbar, this enables you to set up a complete table just by clicking and dragging. You're unlikely to need more than the 20 cells that are instantly available, but the Insert Row or Column (Table Menu) is at your disposal if you do.

• Row and Column Selection - could not be more efficient in FrontPage Express. Make a selection by clicking on the edge of a Row or Column and its properties are available with a right-click. You can adjust alignment, width and colour, or even add a background image to the selected cells.

• WebBot Components - are dynamic objects that add rich functionality without complex programming. FrontPage 97 has several more WebBots, but these three included with FrontPage Express should give you a good idea of just how handy they can be. Be warned you do need to be accessing the page from a FrontPage server or a Personal Web Server with FrontPage extensions.

• Include: This WebBot enables you to include a separate HTML document within an HTML file. This function is great for adding a common page to several HTML pages so that when the time comes to change the information, only one file has to be altered. The Include has many other features which can be extended by using some simple scripting.
  
• Search: Although this is quite a basic tool, it should be sufficient for searching within a site.

A few properties need to be added in the dialog box so you can sort the search data according to its relevance.

The Text field and required buttons will be added to your page automatically; the dotted lines around the search function only indicates that it is a WebBot, so don't worry - you won't see them in the browser.

• Timestamp - puts the date and time of the last update at the bottom of the page.