The Microsoft FrontPage website on www.microsoft.com can also be accessed easily with the Help: Microsoft on the Web command from the Microsoft FrontPage client. This site also contains help on advanced FrontPage topics such as working with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, or how to author securely (using SSL) against Netscape servers on UNIX.
[Contents]
-Top Ten New Features
-General Issues
-Setup and Compatibility
-Working with the FrontPage Beta
-Using the Navigation View
-Other Notes
[Top Ten new Features]
The top 10 FrontPage 98 with Bonus Pack Features are:
1. Site Maps and Automatic Navigation Bars
2. Graphical Themes
3. Wysiwyg Frames
4. Table Drawing Tool and Drag & Drop Table Editing
5. One Button Publishing
6. Cascading Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML support
7. Forms that Send email
8. Auto-thumbnail, Text on Images, Washout and other Image Editing tools
9. Performance Improvements
10. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator integration
[General Issues]
* As with any beta product, the safest way to try FrontPage 98 Beta 2 is to install it on a completely separate machine than the one with your working content. If that is not possible, then, before using Microsoft FrontPage 98 Beta 2 with existing data you should make a backup copy of your content directory. This is especially true if you will be upgrading a previous FrontPage installation of the Personal Web Server. Upgrading over your existing installation will permanently convert your content to the new FrontPage 98 format.
* FrontPage Server extensions for UNIX platforms are not available in this Beta release. They will be available soon on http://www.microsoft.com. Use the Help: Microsoft on the Web command in the FrontPage Explorer to see information on any new releases or issues.
* Many of the issues described in this readme reflect the current areas of incomplete functionality with the Beta version and will be resolved before FrontPage 98 is released.
[Setup and Compatibility]
FrontPage 98 Beta 2 is an evaluation copy, which will expire on 11/30/97 after which it will not launch.
FrontPage 98 can be installed on the same machine as previous versions of FrontPage. In these cases it is best to first back up the entire content directory for the personal web server. Then when installing FrontPage 98, choose a different folder for the client setup. This beta evaluation software is not a qualifying product for the yet to be released FrontPage 98 upgrade package.
In order to use the FrontPage 97 client after uninstalling the FrontPage 98 beta, you will need to re-install the FrontPage 97 server extensions. This can be done by re-running the FrontPage 97 setup or running the Server Administrator (found in the \program files\Microsoft FrontPage\ folder) and clicking Install.
[Working with the FrontPage Beta]
(The following are a list of known issues or incomplete areas with the FrontPage Beta. Again for more up to date information see http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/ for the latest list.)
The Beta version of Microsoft FrontPage does not have spell checking or the thesaurus enabled.
There are currently some known performance issues with operations involving large webs and the Beta version of IIS 4.0. These will be improved in subsequent releases.
To delete webs created with the FrontPage 98 beta program it is best to use the FrontPage Explorer's File-Delete FrontPage Web command. Deleting the files directly through the Windows Explorer will not remove all references to the web.
If you are using the FrontPage 98 client with a server that has the FrontPage 97 (or older) server extensions, new features including Themes, Shared Borders, and Navigation view will not be available. Some of these features such as Navigation view appear to be functional but may have unexpected results.
For Beta 2 when selecting a theme sometimes the combination of "Active Graphics" and "Background Images" will result in buttons that have a solid color background. To work around this, either turn the background image off, turn off the active graphics, or select a different theme.
If you receive an exception error from your web server, please shut down FrontPage, restart the server and report the steps that lead up to the error.
Visual SourceSafe integration is not complete for Beta 2 and is not ready for production use.
The Script Wizard will be disabled if Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 Beta 2 is installed.
If you define a class in styles, and that class name has an extended or double byte character in it, it will not appear properly in any of the dropdown menus. It will however, continue to function properly.
[Using the Navigation View]
The Navigation View in the FrontPage Explorer can be used to make sitemaps of your web. It will determine how the automatic navigation bars work in your pages. If you do not define a navigation structure for your web, automatic navigation bars will not display any buttons.
If you get an error message while working in this view or saving your changes press F5 to refresh the view and get back to a working state. The same is true if the view appears empty even though you have a legal home page.
[Other Notes]
Some Clipart Content (C) 1997 by Amber Productions, Inc. All rights reserved.
gd 1.2 is copyright 1994, 1995, Quest Protein Database Center, Cold Spring Harbor Labs.
Based on GIFENCOD by David Rowley. A Lempel-Zim compression based on "compress". Modified by Marcel Wijkstra Copyright (C) 1989 by Jef Poskanzer.
This beta evaluation copy of FrontPage 98 does not qualify for technical support.
