Making a web-site

Creating a web

Our web work will involve the program Microsoft FrontPage 2003. There are to be sure other programs that accomplish these tasks equally well. The College network is uniform in this regard is uniform. FrontPage is installed on all College computers running Windows. A note of caution: the displays that FrontPage uses are somewhat similar to those of "Windows Explorer," or the program initiated  by clicking "My Computer." Make sure you know which display you are looking at: the FrontPage display has a gray pane on the left.

1.    Open FrontPage.

2.    Choose: "File-New" You will see a window like the one below. 

3.    In the box on the right  Specify "One page Web site..." In the next window choose "Empty Web Site" and then on the right side you must specify the location of your folders. Use the browse button to choose your folder. (Here I have mapped to Lola's folder.)

4.   Click "OK." You will next see a window like this. 

8.   In the "Folders" pane, double-click the icon for the file: "index.htm." That file will now appear in the large page pane. Click on the page and type something on it, your name, a favorite saying, whatever.

9.   Save the page. (File-save, or the save icon)

10.  Close FrontPage.

11.  Open a web browser, say Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Type in the course URL: "http\\cml.austincollege.edu\Institute2007\German\Lola". See if your page comes up.

13.  Close your browser.

14.  Log off the computer.

Once is not enough

1.   Go to another computer. Log in as you. 

2.   Make sure a drive has been mapped our web folder on "erasmus/CMLWeb". Start FrontPage.

3.   Open your web. ("File-Open Web"). Open your index page ("index.htm")

Entering text in FrontPage

Text is entered in FrontPage much in the same way that familiar word-processing programs operate. You can control the look of the text you enter by using the "Style," "Font," and "Font-Size" windows below the menu bar. Further control is available through the "Format" menu by choosing "Format-Font" and "Format-Paragraph." Remember that any fonts you choose will be downloaded from the hard drive of your user's  computer. If that computer does not have  the really cool  font you have chosen, then her computer will resort to the "default" font, usually "Times" or "Times New Roman." 

You can also add text from other programs by using the "Edit-Copy" then "Edit-Paste" commands. 

When the user opens your page in his browser, the text you have entered will wrap at the edge of his window. Since there is no telling what this width might actually be, there is no way of predicting where your lines of text will break. You can enter your own line breaks by "Shift-Enter." (You hold down the Shift key while you strike the Enter key.)

Adding images

Acquiring images. The most productive way to work with images is to add the .JPG and .GIF files to your web. The "Images" folder is ideal for this, although it is in no way required. (You can place image files wherever you like within your web.) 

Adding images to the page. Once you have placed images in your web, you can insert them in a page by means of the command: "Insert-Picture-from File."  You may also use the "Edit-Copy" command to pick up an image from another program, then use the "Edit-Paste" command to place an image in a file in FrontPage. If you do this, FrontPage will ask you where to store the file the next time  you invoke the "File-Save" routine. It is a good idea to keep track of where your image files are located. Perhaps the easiest way to keep track is to use a folder in your Web entitled "Images."

Controlling image size. FrontPage provides a utility for resizing the image. You may either use the "Format-Properties" command, choosing the "Appearance" tab, or you can use the sizing handles that appear when you click on the picture in "Normal View." JPEG files lose less clarity when you resize that do GIF files, and all images lose resolution when you make them larger, which, accordingly, is usually a bad idea.

Making  links

The power of the Web depends on the ability to make links. You click with the mouse on something and something happens. The basic linking process associates a segment of text with another file somewhere on the World-Wide-Web. 

linking text

Before you create a link to another page you must logically have another page in mind. For the purposes of this exercise, let's make a new page. 

Create a new page in your Web, either by using either the menu command "File-New" in FrontPage or by clicking on the blank page icon, usually located directly under the "File" menu. Put something on the page either text or graphics or both, then save the page to your Web. (Use "File-Save" or click the icon that looks like a floppy disk.) In order to save the file you will have to give the page a name.  Once you have saved the page to your web, it should show up in your folder pane to the left of the pane in which you are working.

Now go back to the original page. Choose the menu command "Window", locate your original file and select it. Select a segment of text in your original file (presumably "Index.htm"). Now choose the menu command: "Insert-Hyperlink". In the window that appears--it looks like this--

Choose the file to which you want the selected text segment to be linked, then click "OK".

linking images

In the same way that text-segments may be linked to another file on the Web, so may an image. Once the image is on your page, select the image and use the hyperlink button  (or the menu command: "Insert-hyperlink"). In the URL box write in the Internet address (URL). 

Hint: This action can be facilitated by using the Control-C function for copying the URL from the target web page, pasting into the URL line on the FrontPage Hyperlink window.