A Taste of FrontPage
Now that the shopping cart and merchant services are in reasonable order, it's time to move on to the actual web site. Since I've never created a web site before, I'm a little nervous. It seems that every high school student these days is capable of creating a web site at some level. Time to bring myself up to speed with the rest of the world.
As I stated before, I use the web for everything. I consider myself extremely proficient at web search and online shopping. I have become quite the web snob, at least from a consumer or user point of view. Now I'm on the other side of the fence. Am I going to be able to create a web site that I, as a user, would find responsive, helpful and functional???
Here goes. I start everything I do by reading about it first. This works best for me. Last year I purchased a Dummies book about creating web pages. It is laid out as 9 separate handbooks in one. I bought this to give me a broader overview of my choices. I've done a little reading off and on so I'm somewhat familiar with the techy terms I need to know. I find the book very helpful.
I'm using FrontPage for its WYSIWYG interface. I'm familiar with Word so it looks pretty friendly. I know there are different ways to lay out a page. You can use a template which is pretty straight forward, or create a format and theme from scratch. I want to create my own look. I can choose a blank page, frames or layers. I tried the blank page first but found it difficult to position text and images the way I want to see them. Now.... frames or layers??? I'm not sure what the advantages and disadvantages of each one are. This will require reading beyond my Dummies book. For now, layers looks like something I can get along with.
So far, I have created a few layers and added images and text to them. I'm still playing and familiarizing myself with the software. It's going well. One of my favorite features of FrontPage is the ability to see the HTML code or to preview the page as it would appear on the web. There is also a cross between the two that allows me to see both at once. As I continue to plunk things onto the page I am becoming more and more interested in what is going on behind the scenes in the HTML code. I add something, then look at the code and then preview. I love this feature! I can't help but wonder what it would be like if we had the ability to see "code" or "preview" in other aspects of our daily lives. Imagine the possibilities!
Back to work. Till next time,
Sandy
