5 Quick & Dirty Tips For Using Microsoft FrontPage To Make Better Looking Websites
If you're already using Microsoft Word to create your website's content, it would be a shame if you didn't get the best use possible out of FrontPage. It's an old-school program with a number of perks, and by learning these tips, you'll be able to tweak your site and make whatever design changes that are necessary.
The 5 things mentioned in this blog post are:
- Here is some advice on making your site look better from the inside out.
- Here is one quick way to speed up processing of web pages in FrontPage 2003 so that you can generate more personalized outputs at a quicker pace.
- These are methods to help you quickly change or remove the default blue hyperlinks from your web pages.
- This is how to avoid over-editing your website's design if you're not careful.
- And here are five great tips on making your content more organized and user friendly.
- I distinctly remember my first computer class in high school when we were instructed on how to use Microsoft Word. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but when we got to the part of how to make our own websites with FrontPage…that was a different story. I was astonished at the sheer amount of functionality built into the program, and I hadn't even seen most of it. So after that class, I couldn't wait to get home and show my family what I had learned. Maybe they would think it would be useful (they still do). Maybe they'd be impressed that I actually knew something about computers. But maybe most importantly, maybe they'd help me figure out how to use FrontPage so that it didn't look as bad as the site that my teacher had just showed us - a site with a lot going on and an awful amount of "blue links" all over the place.
– Image Via: https://www.trulyterrible.com/23-horrifying-examples-of-web-design/
After a few hours of setting things up and creating pages, I tried to view my site on the web from my house (it was really slow to process), but I soon realized that it would be faster for me to go to school and use the computers there (my computer could barely handle playing games). Well needless to say, I spent more time figuring things out with FrontPage than actually showing them off - but eventually I got things done, and then later on created some pretty cool pages with it. In fact, up until about a year ago, I still had a page or two on my website that I created with FrontPage. They weren't bad looking at all, and I was kind of proud of them. But as time went by though, I began developing better skills and eventually moved on from FrontPage to Dreamweaver (which is what the majority of the web uses to this day).
- The most essential thing you need to know when using Microsoft Word to create your website's content is that your paragraphs need to be properly formatted when pasted into FrontPage. Otherwise, you'll end up with gigantic gaps and awkward spaces between your paragraphs; also known as "hard line break"s. This is because of how Word formats its paragraphs - it automatically creates a hard breaks whenever there is a space between words that needs to be replaced with a line break. So what you'll want to do when pasting your blocks of text into FrontPage is adjust the spaces between the words so that they are uniform (with the exception of separating words with hyphens, or dashes). Also, try to limit using dashes and only use hyphens when absolutely necessary.
- Another thing you might not like about how Word formats pages is that columns don't line up properly and have gaps in between them. This can make your content look weird, and also messes up your margins. To avoid this problem, you need to use a specific table format for each column you want to use in FrontPage. It's easy to change the table format in FrontPage; just go to Edit from the Tools menu (or press the F7 key). When you get there, make sure that you change what kind of table is currently set by selecting that option. You can have either a simple table or a more complex table. Simple tables usually will only have one column (as you would need only one column if you were creating a graph), while more complex tables will use multiple columns and allow you to use various row heights (more on this later).
- Here are some tips that can help you make your text look better.
- One thing I like to do when viewing my websites on the web is to remove any blue hyperlinks that I don't want on the page. These links usually appear as links between paragraphs because of how Word creates paragraphs. You can either use the underlining feature in FrontPage to replace them with blue text (highlight the word, then go to Format from the tools menu, and finally click Underline), or you could use your mouse to right click on it and select Remove Hyperlink. This will eliminate numerous blue links throughout your web page.
- When you're done editing your website in FrontPage, you'll want to speed up the processing time of web pages before previewing it and testing it out. There are two easy ways that can do this: The first method is by creating a master page and having all of your content pages derived from it. The master page is a page that contains all of your site's content, and all of your content pages are derived from it. In FrontPage 2003, you can create a new master page by going to View from the Tools menu (or pressing the F9 key), and then clicking Add/Remove Master Page. Either way, the method is fairly simple. Once you've done this, your web pages will be processed faster so that they can display properly.
Conclusion?
Microsoft For Word is a great tool. But as useful as it is and as good as it looks, there are some things you might discover about it that will turn you off because of the time and effort you spend working with it. Hopefully, this helps give you a better idea of what to expect when learning Microsoft Word for creating web pages. Also remember that I'm not an expert at all in programming or anything - I've only gotten pretty good at using MS Word for creating websites. So if this was helpful to anyone else, then rest assured that I've done my job well! :)
- As always, stay tuned to FMAquad.