FrontPage Express and GeoCities Help

Download: If you have MS Internet Explorer 4.0 you can get FrontPage Express for Free. Just go to the Microsoft Internet Explorer page at: http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/ , go to the Internet Explorer addon download page, and select FrontPage Express. Microsoft also has a page about FrontPage Express at: http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/features/frontpad.htm .

Overview: FrontPage Express is an easy to use HTML page Editor, which works much like a word processor. It is a good choice for making your pages at GeoCities, and I would recommend using FrontPage Express before buying one of the Full Versions of FrontPage.

Usage: The Help that comes with FrontPage Express is not very extensive, but you can learn your way around fairly easily (just play around some and try things). The first thing to do is go to the View Menu, and turn on all of the Toolbars and the Status Bar. The Toolbars include the most commonly used features, and when you put your mouse over a Toolbar or Menu Item, a description is displayed in the Status Bar (at the bottom of the window). Another very useful feature is the Context Menu, if you click your Right Mouse Button on any object, text, highlighted text, or the page itself, a Context Menu will appear which allows you to open a Properties Dialog for the object, as well as the properties of all the containing objects right down to the page properties. Finally, there is the Insert Menu where you can insert Images and other items into your page. You position the cursor on your page where you want to insert the item, then go to the Insert Menu and select what you want to insert. For inserting text links, you highlight the text on your page that you want to be the link, then go to the Insert Menu and select the Hyperlink sub-menu (note: to make an Image a link, click your Right Mouse Button on the Image, and open the Image Properties dialog, you fill in the URL for the link, in the Default Hyperlink Location field, on the first tab).

Case Sensativity: GeoCities is case sensative, this means that Capitalization makes a difference. The easiest way to avoid problems is to use lower case (do not capitalize) for file names, your GeoCities user id, and your GeoCities password.

Links: Use relative URLs to your images, page links etc, that are located on your home site. A relative URL is just the file name and extension (example: hello.htm), remove any directory information, if frontpage inserts it. Of course, any links to other sites should contain the full URL (example: http://www.oocities.org/SouthBeach/Sands/1492/ if you want to link to my home page).

Browsers: There is a difference in how different browsers (and versions of browsers) will display your page. If you preview your pages frequently in both Netscape and MSIE as you edit your pages, you will find what works well in both of them. You should be aware that Marquees and the background sound in the Page Properties only work in MS Internet Explorer. Also table options behave differently between the two browsers, and if you are going to use sizes, either use pixel sizes or percentages, do not mix them.

Restrictions: GeoCities does not have the MS FrontPage Server Extensions, so a few features of FrontPage Express will not work at GeoCities (mainly dealing with form processing). GeoCities does provide it's own alternatives to some of these, see my GeoCities Page for details, some can also be obtained from Free Servers on the Web. Here is a list of FrontPage features that will not work at GeoCities:

• Confirmation Form
• Servey Form
• Search

Note: If you use the Form Wizard (or Personal HomePage Wizard), set the Form Handler to Custom ISAPI, NSAPI, or CGI Script. After the form is generated, you can then convert it to the GeoCities EMail Form Handler, by following the instructions on my FeedBack Form page.