InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
May 17, 1999
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FrontPage 2000 supplies a good selection of server scripts and Java applets for such an environment, including full-text site searching, discussion groups, hit counters, banner ads, and scheduled images, such as those that change depending on the date.
Other components--such as a navigation bar and a data-bound grid control--can be added via FrontPage 2000's add-in interface, including design-time controls from Microsoft Visual InterDev. Design time controls are created with Visual InterDev and installed as FrontPage Server Extensions or, on Windows NT servers with Microsoft Internet Information Server, available through Active Server Pages.
The whole class of data-access components in FrontPage 2000 is vastly improved. FrontPage 98 supported only a one-way "Database Results Wizard" that didn't allow database updates. FrontPage 2000 still provides this wizard for users with little data-access experience, but also opens options for advanced Web data access.
Microsoft makes a valiant attempt to streamline the process of storing information submitted from a form. When a form is added to a Web page either in the layout view or the HTML view, developers can edit the form's properties to save submitted results to a file, an E-mail address, a FrontPage-provided form handler, a custom Common Gateway Interface or server API handler, or a table in a database. If you do not already have a database in which to store the results, FrontPage 2000 will create one for you, including the table and data source connections.
Best of all, with FrontPage 2000's new policy of preserving code, you can modify any scripts and Active Server Pages code that FrontPage 2000 automatically generates. You can write scripts from scratch, too, by typing them directly into the FrontPage 2000 editor or by using the built-in Microsoft Script Editor, also known as the Microsoft Development Environment.
The Script Editor is quite powerful. It provides a Visual Basic-like user interface that displays client and server objects, drag-and-drop HTML elements, and an HTML outline of your page along the left edge. A properties panel displays a selected element's properties just like Visual Basic, and the middle panel displays the page source or a page preview.
The script debugger lets users step through scripts, set breakpoints, watch variables, and monitor processes while a page is executing in Internet Explorer. One inconsistency between the Script Editor and FrontPage 2000 is that HTML formatting preferences and other options do not carry over from one tool to another.
Extending FrontPage 2000
FrontPage 2000, like its Office 2000 siblings, exposes an Application Object Model that opens the FrontPage environment to customization and extension. Menu items and toolbar tools can be added or modified, and even new wizards can be created and installed.
FrontPage 2000 AOM extensions can also access each Web page's Document Object Model. The DOM consists of the individual objects and relationships that make up an HTML page, things such as HTML formatting tags, frames, and forms. The DOM is widely used by DHTML, JavaScript, and VBScript programmers to address and affect page elements. FrontPage uses the DOM when checking pages for link information. Likewise, developers extending FrontPage 2000 via the AOM can use the DOM to access and manipulate Web pages. The Web Object Model gives access to Web site properties and settings.
FrontPage has always been somewhat dependent on having proprietary extensions on the server side. While they are not necessary to use most FrontPage features, the components that handle automatic publishing and enable searching, form handling, and other functions won't work without the FrontPage Server Extensions installed on the Web server. Microsoft provides the FrontPage Server Extensions for free on the FrontPage Web site for most major Web servers.
Microsoft expects to ship FrontPage 2000 by the middle of June, along with the rest of Office 2000. While there are some worthwhile integration points with Office 2000, there are plenty of reasons to use FrontPage 2000 without Office 2000. Strong site-management tools and greatly improved Web page creation and Web application development tools make FrontPage 2000 my first choice for Web site development.
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