FrontPage 2002 Workspace Management Techniques

This chapter is from the book

Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Unleashed

Learn More Buy

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book 

Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Unleashed

Learn More Buy

Working with Toolbars and Menus

FrontPage 2002 has more than a dozen built-in toolbars. Each toolbar gives you access to a group of related commands. Two toolbars, the Standard toolbar and the Formatting toolbar, appear just below the menu bar when you first start the program. Others, such as the Reports toolbar, appear only when you switch to certain views. (Incidentally, the menu bar is actually a toolbar as well, although it operates a little differently than the others.)

Detaching and Docking Toolbars

At first glance, the Standard toolbar looks nothing like the Reports toolbar. After all, the Standard toolbar seems to be an integral part of the FrontPage window, whereas the Reports toolbar floats freely above it. In reality, however, these two toolbars represent two different ways that each toolbar can appear.

One way to dock a floating toolbar is to drag it (by its title bar) to the top or bottom edge of the window and release it. In most cases, you'll probably want the new toolbar to appear on a row by itself, so drag it over the left edge of an existing toolbar. Otherwise, you'll end up with two toolbars on the same row, which will probably be too wide for your monitor. In that case, you'll have to click the More Buttons button at the right edge of the toolbar to access the buttons that didn't fit.

You also can dock a toolbar to the left or right edge of the window. When you do this, the toolbar automatically rotates 90 degrees, and you'll be able to make selections just as you do with any other menu.

Each docked toolbar has a move handle that lets you relocate the toolbar within the FrontPage window. On horizontal toolbars, the move handle appears at the far left edge; on vertical toolbars, it appears at the top. To make a docked toolbar float, simply drag it away from the edge of the window. Or double click on any part of the toolbar that is not a button and it will undock itself.

After you detach a docked toolbar, you can resize it by dragging on any edge. Figure 3.5 shows several configurations for the Table toolbar. Remember that the menu bar is a _special toolbar, so you can detach it as well.

Figure 3.5 Several configurations of the Table toolbar.

Turning Toolbars On and Off

Depending on how you use FrontPage, you'll probably find that some toolbars are more important than others. If your Webs aren't graphics-intensive, for example, you might not want to take up valuable screen real estate with the Picture toolbar.

You can turn toolbars on and off in several ways:

• Choose View, Toolbars to access the Toolbars submenu (see Figure 3.6). Choosing a toolbar toggles it on or off; the check marks indicate the currently visible toolbars.

• Right-click on any existing toolbar, which brings up the same options shown in Figure 3.6.

• Click the close box on a floating toolbar to hide it.

Note that you cannot turn off the menu bar; it's always visible.

Figure 3.6 A check mark on the Toolbars submenu indicates that a toolbar is displayed.

Accessing Hidden Toolbars

FrontPage 2002 includes several hidden toolbars that can be accessed directly from menu options or from other toolbars. Examples of hidden toolbars include the Form option on the Insert menu and the AutoShapes option on the Pictures toolbar. When you select either of these options, you'll note a gray bar across the top of the related submenu (see Figure 3.7). By dragging this bar, you can detach the submenu and turn it into a floating toolbar.

You also can detach the Border, Font Color, and Highlight Color palettes, which appear after you click the down arrow beside those buttons on the Formatting toolbar.

Figure 3.7 A detachable submenu.

Hidden toolbars act much like the other toolbars, with noted exceptions. They don't include a More Buttons button. Some don't appear in the Customize dialog box. And some cannot be docked, such as the Border, Font Color, and Highlight Color palettes.

Adding and Removing Toolbar Buttons

Each toolbar comes with a standard set of buttons and drop-down menus, ranging from the Style menu's single button to the more than 20 buttons on the Standard toolbar. Chances are you'll never use some of these buttons, even on toolbars you use regularly.

FrontPage 2002 lets you quickly remove buttons from any toolbar. To do so, click the Toolbar Options button (the small arrow that appears at the right or bottom edge of a docked toolbar or the left edge of a floating toolbar's title bar) and choose Add or Remove Buttons. Then select Standard to display a pop-up menu like the one shown in Figure 3.8. You can now add or remove buttons.

By selecting a button, you toggle it on or off. Unlike most pop-up menus, this menu stays open until you click somewhere else onscreen, so you quickly can add or remove several buttons at a time. You also can choose Reset Toolbar to return to the default configuration, where all the buttons are visible.

Customizing Your Toolbars and Menus

Although it's handy to be able to quickly add or remove toolbar buttons, FrontPage offers you much more control over your toolbars' appearance. In fact, you can add any command to any toolbar or menu, rename any command, and change the appearance of any button.

To start customizing your toolbars, open the Customize dialog box by double-clicking in the gray area to the right of the Standard toolbar; by choosing Tools, Customize; or by right-clicking any toolbar and choosing Customize from the pop-up menu. Then select the Commands tab, as shown in Figure 3.9. You can now customize toolbars as described in the sections that follow.

Figure 3.8 Adding and removing toolbar buttons.

Figure 3.9 The customize dialog box's commands tab.

Adding a Button or Command

FrontPage 2002 includes more than 250 commands. Although most of these commands appear on FrontPage's toolbars and menus, some can be difficult to find. If you seem to search regularly for certain commands, you may want to add them to an existing toolbar or menu so that they are easier to find.

Let's look at a specific example. The Formatting toolbar includes the Style drop-down list, which lets you quickly change the style of selected text. To access the Style dialog box, which lets you modify a style's definition, you have to go to the Format menu. With FrontPage's customization options, you can add a button to the Formatting toolbar to get quick access the Style dialog box. Here are the steps:

1. Open the Customize dialog box by by choosing Tools, Customize; Then select the Commands tab, as shown previously in Figure 3.9.

2. Choose Format from the Categories list, and then scroll through the Commands list to find the Style command. (It has an icon in front of it with two capital As.)

3. Now drag the command up to the Formatting toolbar and drop it wherever you want it to appear. The other buttons move over to make room.

Grouping Buttons and Commands

The buttons on FrontPage's built-in toolbars are grouped according to function. All the Clipboard commands are grouped together, for example, as are the commands related to font styles. When you add buttons to a toolbar, you can create your own groupings. Simply drag a button to the right a fraction of an inch. After you release the mouse button, FrontPage adds a separator line to the left of the button. (To get rid of the separator line, simply drag the button back to the left.) You also can add a separator line before a menu item. Just drag a menu command down slightly.

Modifying a Button or Command

In addition to adding, deleting, and moving commands, you can change attributes of each FrontPage command. Right-click a menu command or toolbar button while the Customize dialog box is open (or select a command or button and click Modify Selection in the Customize dialog box). The pop-up menu shown in Figure 3.10 appears.

Figure 3.10 You can modify many different attributes of buttons and commands using this menu.

Table 3.1 shows what each of the commands on the Modify Selection pop-up menu does.

Table 3.1 Modify Selections Pop-Up Menu Commands

Creating Your Own Toolbars

After you've mastered the basics of customizing FrontPage's toolbars, you can try your hand at creating a new toolbar. In this section, you'll create a Views toolbar, which duplicates the function of the Views bar. After you create this toolbar, you can hide the Views bar but still have easy access to its functions.

To get started, open the Customize dialog box by right-clicking any toolbar and choosing Customize from the pop-up menu. On the Toolbars tab, click New to display the dialog box shown in Figure 3.11. Type Views in the Toolbar Name field and click OK. Your new Views toolbar appears, although it is blank, of course.

Figure 3.11 Creating a Views toolbar.

Now switch to the Commands tab and choose View from the Categories menu. Find the Page command (it is the first item on the Commands list) and drag it onto the Views toolbar. Repeat this process with the Folders, Reports, Navigation, Hyperlinks, and Tasks commands. Click Close, and you can test the new toolbar. Each of the buttons works like the corresponding button on the Views bar, with one exception: Clicking the Reports _button brings up a pop-up menu, where you can choose which report you want to generate. Just like the built-in toolbars, you can dock and detach your custom toolbar.

The Customize dialog box's Toolbars tab includes three other buttons worth mentioning. Rename lets you give a custom toolbar a new name, and Delete lets you delete a custom toolbar; neither of these commands works on built-in toolbars. The Reset button, on the other hand, works just on built-in toolbars; it undoes any changes you've made to the selected toolbar.

Customization on the Options Tab

The Customize dialog box's Options tab, shown in Figure 3.12, gives you a few more ways to customize the user interface:

• Show Standard and Formatting Toolbars on Two Rows You can enable this check box to place these two toolbars on separate rows. If you clear this option, the toolbars are combined on a single row.

• Always Show Full Menus Select this option to display full menus in FrontPage, rather than showing the most recently command first.

• Show Full Menus After a Short Delay Select this option to show the most recently used commands before displaying full menus.

• Large Icons Enable this check box to replace the standard icons with enlarged icons (32x32 pixels instead of 16x16).

• List Font Names in Their Font Choose this option to make the font names on the Font drop-down list appear in the actual fonts they represent instead of the standard Tahoma font.

• Show ScreenTips on Toolbars If you enable this check box, FrontPage displays a ScreenTip (sometimes called a ToolTip) when the mouse pointer hovers over a button. The ScreenTip indicates the button's name.

• Show Shortcut Keys in ScreenTips After you turn on ScreenTips, you also can display shortcuts keys (such as Ctrl+P) for commands that are accessible from the keyboard.

• Menu Animations Changing the selection in this drop-down list adds an animation effect each time you select a menu.

Figure 3.12 Use the Options tab to customize the look and feel of toolbars and menus.

FrontPage's Long Memory

As you would expect, when you exit FrontPage 2002, it remembers exactly how you've customized the user interface. The next time you start the program, the same toolbars appear in the same position onscreen. So as you use the program, you gradually can customize its interface to work exactly the way you want it to.

FrontPage stores the preference settings separately for each user that uses a computer. The name of the preference file is CmdUI.PRF. On Windows 2000 or later versions of the Windows operating system, this file is stored within the Documents and Settings folder under Application Data\Microsoft\FrontPage\State\CmdUI.PRF.

You can back up your customization settings by copying this file to another location (after you exit FrontPage). You can also move this file to the corresponding directory on another computer to restore the settings there. (Again, FrontPage needs to be closed.)