UNIT 1 Introducing FrontPage The World Wide What? The Explorer The Editor The Web Server Cool for School
FrontPage in the Classroom is produced by ACT360 Media Ltd. in conjunction with Microsoft Corporation. Copyright 1998. All rights reserved. See our entire collection of online tutorials by visiting www.ACTDEN.com

First, let's define what a web site is. Pixel?

It's where a spider lives.

Cute - but wrong. A web site is a group of web pages, covering anything from one of Pixel's art projects to a report on local traffic.

They still have traffic in this time period?!!

What is a web site? The World Wide Web (WWW) is an Internet-based computer network that allows people at one computer to access information stored on another. People connect to these other computers so they can look at web sites - which are groups of documents that present info on everything from the kindergarten art project to your local sanitation schedule. A single document in a web site is often called a web page. These web site documents are stored on high-powered computers called servers. One server can store thousands of documents for many different web sites. When you want to look at a particular web site, your computer connects to a server and receives the web site documents through the Internet. It's very easy to make this connection. Simply select a special WWW address called a URL and the computer takes it from there.

How do you create a web site? All you have to do is create a bunch of web site documents and load them onto a server. This may sound complicated, but it’s not! Lucky for you, there are software programs that will guide you through every step of the way. One such program is FrontPage 98.

Righto! That brings us to FrontPage - the tool we’re going to use to create our report.

It's an amazing piece of software. It allows you to design, create, and publish web sites. You simply choose the type of web site you want and FrontPage will walk you through it. Then, presto! You have a web site and an audience of millions. Grongy!

Pixel, the expression "grongy" hasn't been coined yet.

Okay. FrontPage is rad. Happy?

What is FrontPage? FrontPage is a powerful tool used to design, create and publish web sites. You choose the type of web site you want, while FrontPage generates and organizes all the web site documents you need. Then you can fill your web site with the text, pictures, sounds and other features you want your visitors to experience. By using a tool like FrontPage, creating a web site is now much easier and more intuitive than it was in the past. You can also skip learning HTML (short for Hypertext Markup Language), which is the language or code that web browsers use to present web content. To do all these tasks, FrontPage offers you three different programs. They are: FrontPage Explorer, FrontPage Editor, and FrontPage Personal Web Server.

The first program we'll use is FrontPage Explorer. This part of FrontPage gives you the big picture. For instance, if you're doing a web site on fashion trends in the 90's, you might have a page for hairstyles, a page for clothes, and another for shoes. That's quite a few web pages to organize and link together, and FrontPage Explorer helps you do it.

Bobbed hair, Charleston dresses, top hats...

Wrong time period again, Pixel. That's the roaring 1920s.

FrontPage Explorer When you start FrontPage, the first thing you will see is FrontPage Explorer. This program lets you control the basic design of your web site. Here, you will organize how the group of web site documents will work together as one unified web site.

Buttons on the View toolbar give you the opportunity to look at your web site design in seven different ways - like looking at the same thing from seven different perspectives.

The next program is FrontPage Editor. That's where you create and fine-tune individual web pages. While Explorer gives the big picture, Editor lets you get down to the nitty gritty. This is where you put in text, pictures, and even animation.

I get it. FrontPage Editor is where we put pictures of street wear, cargo pants, and girls with purple fingernails.

FrontPage Editor This is where you fine-tune each web site document - choosing what the pages will say, how they will look, and what kinds of features they will contain. This is the part of FrontPage where you’ll spend most of your time. You will see many different toolbars and buttons in FrontPage Editor. Each one is used to change options available on an individual page. You will find out much more about these options later in this tutorial.

The third program in FrontPage is the FrontPage Personal Web Server. This is like the administrator working behind the scenes, taking care of technical mumbo jumbo so you are free to be creative. Basically, Web Server lets you look at your web site the way others will look at it - through a browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

That's groovy, man.

Uh... that's the 1970s, Pixel.

FrontPage Personal Web Server This part of FrontPage is like the coordinator working behind the scenes. You don't actually work in this part of FrontPage; instead, FrontPage Personal Web Server runs in the background, keeping everything working together properly. This part of the program allows you to look at your web site in browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator - which are the programs your visitors will use to look at your web site. By looking at your web site in Explorer and Navigator, you will see your web site the same way it will appear to your web site visitors.

Deciding what kind of web site to create Conductor: All aboard! All aboard! The train tour of web sites is about to depart! Climb aboard and be ready to check out some of the finest examples of web sites made by teachers and students in schools. We've got roaring sites that feature entire schools, flashy sites that feature classrooms, majestic sites that feature individual students, teachers - and an array of sites on projects from abacuses to zucchinis. For safety's sake, I'll ask you to keep your hands, feet and other body parts inside the train at all times. Hold on tight! What's up at our school? Here's the first web site - chock-full of color and activity! There's a picture of the school - nice old building, isn't it? Some cute little kindergarten kids running in a race at the annual sport's day. There is a group of students in the school's tree-planting project. We'll just slow down a bit, so you can get a good look. This kind of web site gives visitors a general introduction to the school. How many grades are there? How many students attend the school? Are there any special projects going on? How about sports teams? Where is the school? What is the history of the school? Who are all the teachers? You get the picture! This type of web site can work very well as the school's first site. Once you've started out with something like this, you can create new sites and link them to this one. Maybe you'll want to link classroom sites to a school site - look over there! We're at the classroom site section. What's going on in our classroom? Well! Here we have a classroom site featuring the work of many students. The kids really seem to like this exposure, don't they? It's like having even more than 15 minutes of fame! They get to go back and see their accomplishments again and again if they want to, and even show it off to their parents. Sigh... I wish we had web sites back when I was a kid. I could've been a famous poet, you know? Ah, yes. We've got the weekly winner of the math contest - complete with a photo taken by digital camera! Very nice. And here are some short stories about "What I Did Last Summer". A few students' cartoons... And, look! Isn't that sweet - a picture of the teacher at home with his pet cat. There are also some details on the class - how many students, where they're from, what they like and dislike about school, etcetera. As you can see, there are a lot of things you can feature on a classroom site. You and your students will be able to come up with a ton of ideas together! Individual student and teacher pages Look at all the eyes staring out at you. All those pictures of people on personal web pages! I always like to see a picture of the person who's made his or her own web page. I'm always curious about the way people look. It's like talking on the phone and wondering what the person on the other end of the line really looks like. Individual pages can contain just about anything - and everything. For example, you can include photos of yourself, your dog, your brother, or your brother's dog. Perhaps you'd opt for a written story of your life with your favorite poem, or your favorite recipe. You can have links to your favorite web sites, a list of your favorite hockey players, an audio clip of you playing the kazoo, a video clip of you doing the Mexican Hat Dance, a photo of that giant pumpkin in your garden - whew! I'm losing my breath over here! Anyway, the point is, you can make an individual web page, and whatever you put on it is entirely up to you. Like each person in the world, each web page is unique. Various projects This section can become quite chaotic, so you'd better hold on tight. I'm going to keep my mouth shut for most of the time, so you can have a chance to look at all this yourself. Some of the sites are made by groups of students, while individual students make others. They cover projects done in science, math, language arts, physical education class - it's all here. We'll finish off the rest of the tour while you folks check out all there is to be seen.