Current Multimedia Home Page
MS Multimedia Skills
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MS Academics
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Middle School
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The American School in Japan
Current Multimedia Home Page
For use during November 22 and 24, 1999.
MultiMedia Skills Students:
The purpose of the next two days is to explore the capabilities of Microsoft FrontPage. However, first finish your copyright pages (this should take less than 10 minutes) and I will post them when I return from TIES. Eight teachers are interested in having you be their web consultants and developing their web sites, so we will start on that project when I return. In the meantime, you need to become more familiar with FrontPage and it's capabilities. Two views that are very helpful are the "Views Bar" (selected by checking "Views Bar" in the View menu) and the Folder List (selected by clicking he f5th button from the left on the standard tool bar, or by going to the View Menu, selecting the down-pointing arrows at the bottom, then selecting Folder List).
Use "Help" liberally and often during this exploration!
Check out the various kinds of new page templates that FrontPage has and get a feel for what they can do.
Go to File==>New Webs and create a new web using each of the various types of webs. Notice where these webs go so that you can delete them later (we don't want to litter the hard drives!). Explore what each type of web does and the files that it creates, and check out the various reports. Use Front page help liberally and often. However, don't make the mistake of thinking that because these templates are good because they are in FrontPage. You will see a lot of bad webs--notice that some of the wizards ask if you want to include an "under construction sign", a big no-no.
Go to Format==>Themes and apply them to some of the webs (or create your own) to get an idea of what they do and how they work. (Some of the webs use themes, also.) However, note that themes are typically set up for screen size of 800 by 600. Notice that when you preview them in the browser at 640 by 480 you have to scroll horizontally. This tends to drive your viewers nuts.
Go to Format==>Shared borders and see how they are applied and how they are used, then go to the Insert==>Navigation Bars. Note that for Navigation bars to be effective, you need to to have created a Navigation Structure using the Navigation view, and that is most helpful when the "Folder List" is turned on.
Reports give you various information about your web. However, for them to work you must have a page called "index.htm" or "index.html". When FrontPage checks for links, it starts looking from that page. (That page is very important; it is the default page that web servers serve up when a page is not specified. See what you get when you enter "asij.ac.jp/middle/mmedia" in your browser. It's not the home page, but it allows you to get to it.
Have fun!
Last updated 09/20/01.