FrontPage's Toolbars
By default, FrontPage 2002 loads with two toolbars immediately below the menu bar. Several other toolbars are included with the package, and they can be called up at any time via the View, Toolbar command. Furthermore, you can customize the toolbars to your specific needs. Here you briefly examine the toolbars and look at the customization process.
Figure 3.6 shows FrontPage 2002 with all the toolbars visible. Several are inactive, with grayed-out features. The features become active only if you're performing a task to which they apply.
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You can change the positions of any of the toolbars. To do so, move the cursor to the far left, where a small vertical line marks the start of the toolbar. The cursor will turn into a four-point arrow, at which point you can drag the toolbar left, right, up, or down. If the toolbar is docked with other toolbars (flush against them so that it does not have its own title bar and exit (X) button), as are all the toolbars in Figure 3.6, you can drag the toolbar along the other docked bars and drop it where you want it. If you drag it away from the docked toolbars, the toolbar becomes a floating toolbar, which you can move anywhere on the screen. By default, only the Standard and Formatting toolbars are docked; the rest, when summoned with the View, Toolbars command, appear as floating toolbars. You move a floating toolbar as you'd move any other window, by clicking and holding its title bar.
Figure 3.6 In this figure, the toolbars are all docked along the top or bottom of the FrontPage screen. Obviously, this becomes a workable environment only with a large screen at high resolution.
The Standard Toolbar
The Standard toolbar contains many icons common to Windows programs. Only a few are specific to FrontPage itself. Follow these from left to right (assuming the default toolbar configuration). Depending on the view you are working in, as well as whether a web or page is actually loaded into FrontPage, some of the icons will be grayed out:
Create a New Normal Page—Click to open a new page in the main FrontPage window. Click the down arrow beside the icon to start a new page, task, folder, or web. Corresponds to File, New.
Open—Click to yield the Open File dialog box. Click the down arrow to choose between the Open File and the Open Web dialog boxes. Corresponds to File, Open.
Save—Saves the current document to your hard drive (or networked drive). Brings up the Save As dialog box if the document is unsaved. Corresponds to File, Save.
Search—Click to open the Search pane at the far right of the main viewing window (replaces the Task pane).
Publish Web—Begins the Web publishing process, covered in Chapter 19, "Publishing a Web to a Server Without FrontPage Extensions." Corresponds to File, Publish Web.
Toggle Pane—Toggles between showing the Folder List or the Navigation pane, in between the Views Bar and the main viewing window.
Print—Brings up the Print dialog box. Corresponds to File, Print.
Preview in Browser—Opens a browser window with the currently active document loaded. Corresponds to File, Preview in Browser.
Spelling—Initiates the spell-check process.
Cut, Copy, Paste—These next three icons correspond to Edit, Cut; Edit, Copy; and Edit, Paste, respectively.
Format Painter—Activates the Format Painter procedure.
For information about Format Painter, see "Enhancing Pages with Graphics and Multimedia," p. 117
Undo—Click to undo the most recent action. Click the down arrow to reveal a list of actions ordered from most to least recent and select the action you want undone. Corresponds to Edit, Undo.
Redo—Click to redo the most recent action. Click the down arrow to reveal a list of actions ordered from most to least recent and select the action you want redone. Active only if a valid Redo action is possible. (Not all Undo actions can be redone.) Corresponds to Edit, Redo.
Web Component, Insert Table, Insert Picture from File, Drawing, Insert Hyperlink—These are the next five icons. These commands open the dialog boxes for adding a FrontPage component, table, graphic, and hyperlink, respectively. Correspond to the same commands on the Insert menu.
Refresh, Stop—These buttons are similar to those in any Web browser. Refresh reloads the current document. Stop halts the loading of a page from the Web.
Show All—Reveals formatting marks, principally carriage returns. This is not the same as Reveal Tags, which displays all HTML tags.
Help Tool—Click to activate, and then click the item for which you want help. This activates the Help system.
More Buttons—The down arrow at the far right of each toolbar lets you customize FrontPage's interface by adding or removing buttons, changing keyboard shortcuts, and so forth. Corresponds to Tools, Customize.
The Other Toolbars
The remaining toolbars are covered throughout this book, in chapters devoted to the features that employ them. Here is an introductory overview:
These toolbars do not appear in FrontPage until you select them from the cascading menu under Views, Toolbars. After you display a toolbar, it remains displayed, even after exiting and restarting FrontPage. You must deselect it if you want to hide it. Toolbars can be placed anywhere on the screen, either as floating toolbars or docked along the sides, top, or bottom of the FrontPage display. Here are the remaining toolbars:
Formatting toolbar—Very little difference exists between the Formatting toolbar in FrontPage and the Formatting toolbar of most other Windows application. With it you can format characters with font styles and sizes by boldfacing, italicizing, and underlining, and by left- or right-justifying and centering. You can produce bulleted and numbered lists, and you can increase and decrease the indentation in outlines. You can also change character colors.
The only significant difference is the Styles drop-down list (at the far left of the toolbar). Here you find HTML styles corresponding to the HTML standards, rather than to the types of styles found in a word processor.
For information about style sheets, see "Using Style Sheets with Individual Pages and Full Sites," p. 277
DHTML Effects toolbar—The DHTML Effects toolbar lets you add dynamic HTML effects to your document. The toolbar operates syntactically; the fields create a kind of grammatical sentence to explain the effect. For example, when filled in the fields might read—in order—On Page load, Apply Fly in, from bottom, and that's precisely the effect that is generated.
For more detailed information about the DHTML Effects toolbar, see "Making Your Pages and Webs More Dynamic," p. 423
Drawing toolbar—A toolbar common to Office suites, it offers auto shapes, lines, arrows, squares, circles, and other artistic tools.
Drawing Canvas toolbar—Click to yield the Open File dialog box. Click the down arrow to select between the Open File and the Open Web dialog boxes. Corresponds to File, Open.
Navigation toolbar—Operational only when the Navigation view is selected (not in Page view at all). This toolbar is covered in Chapter 14, "Working with an Existing Web."
Pictures toolbar—The Pictures toolbar activates whenever a graphic is selected in the main FrontPage window.
Positioning toolbar—Lets you position page elements precisely.
Reporting toolbar—Active only when the Reports view is active in the main FrontPage window; this toolbar lets you select from a variety of reports.
Styles—Lets you quickly access the Style dialog; available only in Page view.
Tables toolbar—Active when a table is selected; this toolbar lets you format and position tables in documents.
Task Pane—Opens the Task Pane on the right side of the Main Window; identical to selecting View, Task Pane
Word Art—Allows you to insert richly formatted and fancy text into the document.