AnyFrontPage Bytes Vol I - Tips and Tricks AD FREE Tips and Tricks published in Vol I AnyFrontPage Bytes.

AnyFrontPage Bytes Vol I - All published issues from Vol I - No advertisements. Extra Bonus material only available in this e-book htt
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GENERALLY SPEAKING

Welcome to Volume II of AnyFrontPage Bytes. This year has been quite a journey for all of us in this FrontPage Community. It seemed only fitting that we should Celebrate our New Year. Celebrate, we did, with a massive Virtual Birthday Party.

We received the loveliest Birthday Cards which are available on site for you all to see (please see URL's below). Four senders were chosen for "thank you" software packages by NetStudio http://netstudio.com NetStudio software is the perfect complementary graphic editor for FrontPage. It looks and works like a member of the Microsoft suite of applications.*

Your editors just couldn't decide on a grand prize winner, so we set up a poll for you to choose for us! We also set up a poll for you to choose the runner up for us.

Congratulations Debbie Miller, Grand Prize winner and Jonel, Runner Up prize-winner. Debbie wins a full packaged premium NetStudio software. Jonel has won her choice of an exciting and educational e-book from Linda Johnson, http://personal-computer-tutor.com/ Linda's Office E-Books are easy to understand and are quality ebooks for learning or reference. We know you are going to be delighted!

Our party chat room was decorated with balloons, cyber snacks, music (Happy Birthday, of course), party hats, the lovely cards we received, and games with prizes for download.

AND our own editor, Tiffany K. Edmonds, Microsoft MVP - FrontPage, - yes - you saw that right - Tiffany was honored with the Most Valuable Professional designation by Microsoft. This is MS's highest honor, and we are so proud of Tiffany - so, of course, we had another party!! All new decorations and recipes for our party chat room were prepared. Tiffany was surprised with Champagne Cyber Toasts and a guest list that included family and friends with our AFP guests.

For the party transcripts and guest lists, please see:   [ out of date link - removed ]  Anyone who attended and is not listed or anyone who had any difficulty collecting their prize, please email [ out of date link - removed ]

Thanks to all who helped us promote the parties and to those who donated prizes.

NOTE: *If you want to obtain Netstudio at $10 off the current price use this link. [ out of date link - removed ]

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The editors of AnyFrontPage Bytes are proud to announce the WINNER of this month's birthday present: Angela Snee Happy Birthday, Angela!!!!!!!!!!!

See [ out of date link - removed ]   to view the themes Angela can choose from.

A very Happy Birthday wish to all of our November members:

Tina Clarke (Our very own editor!)
Wim Klerk
Pat White
Alan Heigl
Mike Allen
Sue Murray
Frank Lee
Sandi
flannker
Mindy Ruzumna

Thanks to our November members, PixelMill, and everyone who participated in this fun contest.

http://PixelMill.net helps save time and money in developing MS FrontPage websites. High-quality FrontPage themes and web templates from independent artists and theme designers make finding the right image for your company quick and easy. Jump start your next website with PixelMill.

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Susan (RidesWildHorses) Gardner won the book, 'Essential FrontPage 2002 for Professionals" autographed by author, Tiffany K. Edmonds for her number of posts in the FrontPage Talk.com Forum in October.

Between the door prizes and game prizes, the contest prizes and the birthday presents, AnyFrontPage has given away over 100 presents this month - a new record, even for US!

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We hope that most of you were able to attend the ITTATC State Information Technology Accessibility Initiatives Webcast on October 22, 2002. A fascinating presentation featuring Kathleen Andersen, MVP representing her state in this small panel of accessibility experts. Please see our featured site for links to the transcript.

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As webcrafters, we all have a vested interest in following the Hollings bill (digital copy restrictions) and the Eldred v. Ashcroft case (copyright term extension) that's just been heard by the Supreme Court. For one opinion, please see: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/

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If you have a few products or services for sale and would like to use PayPal to handle the payment processing for these on your site - you're in luck. You can sign up for your free PayPal account, download a free Add-on for FrontPage and then set up your Buy Buttons right on the page in FrontPage. Almost completely point and click!

Step 1: Set up your free PayPal account. https://www.paypal.com/ If you are going to want to accept Credit Card payments with PayPal then you will either need a Premium Account or a Business Account. The business account benefit is that you may do business with PayPal under a business or group name, rather then your individual name. Notice after you sign up that you will need to verify you bank account. This is a fairly easy process, just make sure that you follow up on this step.

Step 2: Download & install your free FrontPage PayPal Wizard Add-in http://auctionmessenger.net/paypal/download.asp

Step 3: Create your product page in FrontPage and/or Open it. Place your cursor on the page where you want to insert a buy button for the product.

1. From the INSERT menu select PayPal Purchase Button Wizard.
2. Click the Start Wizard button.
3. Enter your PayPal account email address and select the type of purchase you want for this product or service. Click the Next Button. Options include: Add to cart, Buy Now, Subscribe and more.
4. Select the button you want to use or enter the URL of your own custom button to use. Click the Next Button.
5. Enter a name for the product or service and an optional item ID number. Enter the price of this item and select the option to allow buyers to purchase more then one of these items or not. Click the Next Button.
6. On the next screen you have the option to enter a URL for your logo as well as pages to show if the buyers purchase is approved or declined. Click the Next Button.
7. On the last screen you can review the selections you made for this button. You will have the option to go back and make any necessary changes. When you are done reviewing your selections click the Insert HTML button and the wizard will add the button on you page.

Too easy! Very Cool!

The wizard will remain open after you insert the button on the page, this way you can click the back button and create another button for another product if you like. When you are done you can click the close button and the wizard will close.

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In part one of this article, we looked at the basics of macro use within FrontPage. Macros are very flexible, allowing the user to easily perform many monotonous tasks. We looked at the main source for information on creating the FrontPage macros - The Microsoft FrontPage SDK. The SDK provides detailed programming help for those who want to venture into the macro world. In addition to that, we looked at objects, properties and methods, and examined the FrontPage VB Editor.

Today, we'll be developing a macro that adds HTML <META> tags to the header of any or all web pages within our site. Specifically, we'll concentrate on the KEYWORD and DESCRIPTION meta tags which are used by search engines to better catalog your web site (and possibly increase your ranking within a search engine). As such, this new macro will require us to look at the file structure of a website within FrontPage, a look at Visual Basic forms for user input, and finally the FrontPage editing capabilities that we can control through code. If this sounds complex and scary, relax! The SDK provides us with everything we need to get started.

Ok, so the first step in creating a more complex macro is to analyze what you want the macro to do. In our case we want a user to select any or all files within a folder within their web site (in FrontPage) and apply two meta tags to the headers of each page selected.

The meta tags will look like this:

<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="This is the description for this web site….">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4…..">

Since the description and keywords vary site to site, we'll need an interface for the user to enter the correct information. This will involve a VB form.

Once the keywords and description have been entered, the macro should open each file selected in the FrontPage Folder List and add the above META tags to the header of each page, then save and close each file.

The place to start here is going to be with the form. So fire up FrontPage and go into the Visual Basic Editor (Tools, Macro, Visual Basic Editor or press ALT-F11). From Part I, you may recall that the VB Editor is divided into several sections, the main Code Window, the Properties panel and the Projects Panel. Our first step is to add a "UserForm" to the Projects Panel. Click on Insert, and then select UserForm from the menu. A blank window will appear on the screen. You'll also see that the Properties Panel has picked up in content. What you're looking at is one of those objects we talked about in Part 1. This one in particular is just a blank Window for us to work with. We can modify some of its properties, and populate it with other objects such as text boxes and buttons. On screen you should also see a Toolbox, which contains some of the most popular objects we can use on our new form.

To customize the form itself, we'll need to work with the Properties panel. Properties are different attributes of our object that we can change or customize. Things like captions, size, and color are all here. Use the Property Panel to find the properties below and change their values.

CAPTION = Keywords / Description Settings
HEIGHT = 265
WIDTH = 305

That should do it for the form. What you've done is change the size of the form, and the Caption label (the blue bar at the top of the form).

Now click on the form itself to select it. In the toolbox, select the object that looks like a capital letter "A" by clicking on it. Move the mouse over the form, and drag out a rectangle. What you now have is a label with the caption "Label1". Select Label1 and change its Caption property (NOT NAME) to the word "Keywords:". Visually size the label to fit the new caption, and position it in the upper left hand corner of the form itself (just drag it!). Avoid double-clicking on the objects. Once double-clicked, you'll end up in the code window. For now we want to work visually, and not with code.

Create one more label, with the caption of "Description" and position it below the "Keywords" label, but about half way down the form.

Here are the settings for both labels that I used when building this tutorial.

Label1 
CAPTION = Keywords:
HEIGHT = 12
WIDTH = 42
LEFT = 6
TOP = 6

Label2
CAPTION = Description:
HEIGHT = 12
WIDTH = 48
LEFT = 6
TOP = 126

In case you're wondering, LEFT and TOP refers to the properties that control the position of the object. They identify the upper left-hand corner in a measurement called "twips". Although I've been programming for years, I never really figured out the purpose of "twips", and the only explanation I ever got about the measurement is that 1440 twips is equal to 1 printed inch (which of course is not the same as looking at an inch of space on the screen).

Now that we got the two labels setup on the screen, we need to add the 2 text boxes and buttons to the form. The text box is identified as "ab" in the toolbox. Go ahead and select it and draw out the first text box below the keyword label. This textbox will probably hold a lot of information, so I stretched it to end just above the "Description" label. Here are the Property settings that I used:

HEIGHT = 102
WIDTH = 288
MULTILINE = TRUE
TOP = 36
LEFT = 6

Regardless of the height and width you set up for your Textbox, be sure to set the MULTILINE Property to true, otherwise the text box will not accept more than 1 line of text.

Now, add the second textbox below the description label. Leave yourself some room at the bottom of the form for buttons. Here are my settings for the Description textbox:

HEIGHT = 72
WIDTH = 288
MULTILINE = TRUE
TOP = 138
LEFT = 6

Things should be taking shape right about now. You have a form and you have a way for users to add their keywords and descriptions. Now all we need is buttons!

Select the CommandButton object from the Toolbox (it's the one that looks like a button), and drop it in bottom right corner of the form.

Here are my settings for both buttons:

CommandButton1 
HEIGHT = 18
WIDTH = 60
LEFT = 234
TOP = 216
CAPTION = Cancel

CommandButton2
HEIGHT = 18
WIDTH = 60
LEFT = 168
TOP = 216
CAPTION = OK

Alright, with that in place, our interface is complete. If you run the form the way it is now, clicking the buttons won't produce any results, and the keywords / description you enter into the prompts won't have any effects on your web's pages. We need to add the code that will do the job for us. Unlike our first macro, the code for this one will be closely tied into the form we just built. In other words, the code will be triggered by the OK button.

I always like to start with the simple tasks when I code, and in this case, programming the Cancel button is easier than programming the OK button. Double-click on the Cancel button. The code window appears and the cursor is placed inside the OnClick procedure for the Cancel button (CommandButton1). Type in the word END and hit enter.

The final version of the code should look like this:

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
    END
End Sub

Press F5 to run your form. Click the Cancel button. Your form should disappear and return back to the code window.

Now, we have to write the meat and potatoes of our macro. So it's off to the SDK to find code that might give us some help. In the SDK, I typed in "meta" as my search, which returned 2 topics for me to look at. The second entry "Opening and Editing Files" seems to be what we're looking for! A further search on "SelectedFiles" brought up an entry called "Accessing Selected Files and Selected Folders". Now, that we have what we need, it's just a matter of combining the stock examples Microsoft provided into a final macro.

The way our macro should work is as follows - User selects one or more files from the Folder List. The macro runs, and the user types in the keywords and description they want to use. They click OK, which triggers the main part of our macro. For each file in the Folder List, a page should be opened, and the Meta tags inserted. The page should then be saved and closed.

After cutting and pasting, and several trial runs, I've come up with the following code, all based on the examples mentioned above.

Private Sub CommandButton2_Click()
  Dim objFile() As WebFile
  Dim intCount As Integer
  Dim strSelected As String
  Dim objPage As FPHTMLDocument
  Dim objPageWindow As PageWindowEx
  Dim objHead As IHTMLElement
  Dim strKeywords As String
  Dim strDesc As String

  strKeywords = "<meta name=""keywords""
content=""" & TextBox1 & """>"
  strDesc = "<meta name=""description""
content=""" & TextBox2 & """>"

  objFile = ActiveWebWindow.SelectedFiles

  If UBound(objFile) >= 0 Then
     For intCount = 0 To UBound(objFile)
         Set objPageWindow =
objFile(intCount).Edit(fpPageViewNormal)
         Set objPage =
objPageWindow.Document

         'Add meta tag to each of the pages.
         Set objHead =
objPage.all.tags("head").Item(0)
         Call
objHead.insertAdjacentHTML("BeforeEnd",
strDesc & vbCrLf & strKeywords)

          'Now save and close the pagewindow
          objPageWindow.SaveAs
objPageWindow.Document.Url
          objPageWindow.Close False

       Next intCount
   End If
   End
End Sub

The above code should be inserted into the procedure called Private Sub CommandButton2_Click(), which you can access by double-clicking on the OK button from the UserForm.

Let's examine the above code a bit closer.

The first part - the Dim statements create the necessary objects and variables for us to use. They are pretty much a copy and paste from their respective examples. objFile() is the collection of files the user selected. The brackets on the end mean that the object is a collection which can hold multiple values (our files).

After the Dim statements, we combine the html Meta tag code with the contents of the textboxes in our form. When this code runs, Textbox1 and Textbox2 will be replaces with whatever we typed into the fields in our form, in essence building the Meta tags for us.

The rest of the code looks through the objFile collection and opens one of our pre-selected files. As each file is opened, you can see it in the FrontPage editor. This is handled by objPageWindow (which controls the editor window). Once the page is opened, objHead which contains all of the information about the HTML header appends our new Meta tags before the </head> tag. Finally, the page is saved and closed, and the whole thing repeats again, until the count of selected files in objFile is exhausted. Once that's done, the macro closes itself (end statement).

Lastly, if you want to add a custom button to FrontPage for working with the macro, you'll need a way to call the form.

Add the following procedure to Module1.bas.

Sub MetaTags()
    UserForm1.Show
End Sub

Link the above macro name to the button (see Part 1 on how to do this). Also, be sure to remember that the macro won't do anything unless you actually select files in the Folder List first!

While this macro isn't the easiest to figure out, if you look at the code, and study the referenced examples, it should make some sense to you. With some basic knowledge of Visual Basic, some great ideas, and a bit of patience and perseverance, you can build your own custom add-ins and your own custom code for making your web editing chores easier!

As always, I welcome any questions or feedback about this tutorial. You can email me at alext@ltmod.com. Happy Programming!!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
******************************
Alex Tushinsky is the chief operating officer of LTMOD.COM and developer of PageTools, and Media Manager add-ons for Microsoft® FrontPage® 2002 and Microsoft® FrontPage® 2000. Alex's extensive programming and web site design experience includes work with international, national, and local corporations, small businesses and non-profit organizations. His teaching resume includes courses for groups of 2-200 and instruction in the areas of
Web Design & Development, Programming, Graphics Development, and other web related technologies.
http://ltmod.com
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EXTRA for this issue:
An internet based article on Internet Security. Please see: [ out of date link - removed ]      by Mike " It is a good day if I learned something new" Mike Baynes is editor of MikesWhatsNews (see a sample on his web page, http://www.mwn.ca/  ) as well as a Technical Support Alliance Member.

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http://anyfrontpage.com/rd/fpw.htm
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Have you noticed that the Internet is more and more a host for Events? Our featured site this month hosted one of the most informative and technologically well-done events that your editors have seen yet. The ITTATC State Information Technology Accessibility Initiatives Webcast was seen at: http://www.tvworldwide.com/

We sincerely hope that many of our subscribers were able to take advantage of the advance notice that we sent out to AnyFrontPage subscribers. This October 22nd webcast was certainly an eye-opener on the many issues of accessibility. The several webcams and simultaneous transcription were well done and easy to follow.

Particular attention was paid to W3C Priority 1 Standards. Authoring tools were also examined, particularly in regard to the limits of resources. One interesting fact to come out of this was that compliance encourages valid HTML, but does not require it.

Kathleen Andersen, MVP, was the first speaker. In her opening she invited all of us webmasters, from whatever area, to join Connecticut's list serv in order to share in their accessibility dialog. Connecticut is ranked first in the areas of security policy and privacy policies on state web sites, and first in the area of web sites accessible to people with disabilities.

The panel for the webcast was: Michael Morris, Chair, ITTATC State IT Initiatives Workgroup Deborah Buck, Accessibility Program Manager, New York State Office for Technology. Kathleen Anderson, Chair, CMAC Web Site Accessibility Committee, State of Connecticut. Erin Labate, IT Policy, Pennsylvania Governor's Office for Information Technology. Dr. Diane Cordry Golden, Director, Missouri Assistive Technology. Mark Urban, Chair, North Carolina Governor's Advocacy Council for Persons with Disabilities

Panelists addressed: · State specific examples of IT accessibility policy development and compliance and verification strategies. · Effective strategies to overcome barriers to IT accessibility. · Challenges of procurement of accessible IT products and services. · State approaches to training state level CIO and Procurement staff on IT accessibility.

Addresses were followed by audience participation in a Question and Answer Session. Please see: http://tvworldwide.com/event_021022_ittatc.cfm for archived streaming media and transcript.

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Simon Says

by Simon Haddad ( http://www.simonbots.com/  )

Well, here it is, the inaugural installment of my column "Simon Says."  I think I like the whole writing thing, even if I am waiting until the last second to get it done. Parkinson's law: "work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion".  On that note, here goes.

According to www.TheCounter.com, as of October 31, 2002, less than 4.18 % of web hits that use their counters (from a sample of 328,434,892 hits) are from computers with 640x480 resolution or less.  Does this mean we can finally stop designing our pages for this lousy VGA resolution?  You wish.

Ever print out a page and miss out on a few words, a web address or part of a picture?  Depending on your browser, your printer may have an even worse resolution than your monitor.  Check out the table below.  I'm using Windows XP Professional Edition and an HP DeskJet 842C printer.

*   HotJava 3, Netscape 6 and *NCSA Mosaic 3 provide no option for changing the margin width of a printed page.

**  Mozilla 1 and Netscape 7 both allow you to change the scale of the printed page (under "Print Preview"), and they both default to "Shrink To Fit".  The numbers, therefore, represent printing at 100% size, at which anything wider than listed gets cut off.

*** Opera 5 & 6 margins are measured in centimeters, one inch margins = 2.54cm (I think).

Depressing, isn't it?  You have, of course, plenty of options available to you, all of which suck.  You can:

1. Ignore it, as nobody would want to print out your web page, anyway (kidding, kidding).

2. Fix it, which, depending on the size of your web, could take forever.

3. Create a "printable version" for each page, which, depending on the size of your web, could also take forever.

Regardless of the option you choose, you'll probably want to take steps to insure it doesn't happen again.

1. Tables: don't set widths, set narrow widths, or set widths as a percentage.  If your table is 700px wide, some text will be cut off, but if your table is (for example) 88% wide, none of it will be cut off.
2. Pictures: anything after the printable pixels will be cut off.  Keep it narrow.
3. Use style sheets.  Check out http://Gloria_G_Johnson.tripod.com for an excellent (if I do say so myself) use of style sheets.  On newer browsers, although full-color, the pages will print out in black & white, with no pictures or banner ads (saves ink), and links to my sites print out with their respective web addresses.  For more information on Cascading Style Sheets, check out the World Wide Web Consortium's official style sheet specifications here: Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1) & Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2), and how to specify different media (such as print) here.

The moral?  Keep your eyes open, try not to miss anything.  I learned about this little issue by accident, and was able to pass it on.  I'll be passing on more in my next article.

See you next month,

Simon.

*Get your copy of the ruler graphic Simon used to measure the screen width here - RULER.GIF

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A FrontPage 2000 Tutorial http://anyfrontpage.com/rd/ija.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Create a Site Map with FrontPage 2002 http://anyfrontpage.com/rd/twd.htm
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 ~ FrontPage Resources:

FrontFX Galleria - NEW FREE ADD-ON
http://xzmedia.com/fpfree.asp 
An Image Gallery type Shopping Cart in which users can select images across your website to be later compiled into a single page gallery of images. This currently FREE release may be expanded to support a further set of image
based tools.

FrontFX PrintWeb - NEW FREE ADD-ON
Ever wanted to print a listing of Files/Folders etc from your current web? Not that easy is it? Well it is now, thanks to FrontFX PrintWeb. Fully optioned and ready to report!
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LightBox - NEW ADD-ON Trial 15 days
http://www.conceiva.com/products/lightbox/  
Lightbox uses a revolutionary new technique for attaching itself to applications. It knows when applications are started, moved, resized, and exited, so that Lightbox stays attached to the application and Over 150 file formats supported!
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Table AutoFormat (Available only at MS but developed by Matt Cohen)
 http://anyfrontpage.com/rd/taf.htm
Tables are commonly used on Web pages to organize and present information in rows and columns, in much the same way tables are used in print documents. Table AutoFormat provides the users an easy way to give their tables a professional look to display information on the Web, without having to know how to work with HTML tags.


 ~ General Resources

AnswerTool
http://www.answertool.com/
Do you find yourself answering the same questions over and over? Save your replies in AnswerTool, then reuse them again and again. Eliminate repetitive typing and dramatically increase your productivity!
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 ~ General Links

ColorMatch 5K
http://www.colormatch.dk/
This utility will help you select a matching 6-color palette for your website.

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