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The latest version of FrontPage
has a lot of exciting new
features that will enhance your
development experience. Most
notably for our viewers is the
new Database Interface Wizard
and the File Upload component
which we will cover in some
detail here. Right now, or in
the near future, you be able to
read many articles from many
different publications and/or
web sites that discuss the
further integration of FrontPage
into the Office environment. We
will not discuss that here.
For a complete
list of the new FrontPage 2002
features, including the version
of the FrontPage server
extensions required to run them,
please click
HERE >>
First of all, lets clarify the
naming of the new product. While
Microsoft has decided to call
the entire Office suite "Office
XP" (Experience), the individual
products will be known as
version 2002. So, officially,
FrontPage is known as FrontPage
version 2002.
Database
Interface Wizard
The feature we are the most
pleased with is the Database
Interface Wizard. We put
together a slide show to help
explain the features of this
wizard. To view it please click
HERE >>
If you are new to FrontPage and
databases, then this wizard
takes the pain out of creating
an interface to your database
that will allow you to add,
delete and update records. In
FrontPage 2000, you have to
create these pages in a manual
fashion using the Database
Results Wizard. We have numerous
tutorials on how to do this.
This wizard will only allow you
to create an interface to one
table in your database at a
time. In future tutorials, we
will walk you through the
somewhat complicated process of
combining one interface with two
tables.
One final note about the
Database Interface Wizard: This
does not replace and should not
be confused with the existing
Database Results Wizard. There
have been no apparent changes to
the DRW in this release.
File Upload Component
In our user forum, we get a lot
of questions about how to upload
a file from a web page. Well, we
got some good news and some bad
news for you.
Good news: FrontPage 2002 now
has a file upload form component
that you can drop into your
page.
Bad news: The component requires
the FrontPage 2002 Server
Extensions and does not work
with ASP pages or the Send to
Database option in form
properties.
So why is this bad news? If you
want to associate form data that
is sent to your database with an
image (let's say you are
creating a user registration or
classified ads application where
users can upload images), you
will not be able to accomplish
this with this component out of
the box. We have developed a
method of making this work and
will provide this in a future
tutorial for our viewers
however, the method is not very
scalable and would not be
recommended for sites with a lot
of traffic.
And here is one additional piece
of bad news; because of security
issues, this component will not
work on UNIX based servers. Not
a problem for those of use who
only develop on the NT platform!
To get a closer look at the
component, take a look at this
slide show. Click
HERE >>
There are some other really cool
features that we would like to
mention but not go into detail
about. Those are: Site usage
reports and the new web
publishing dialog. Site usage
will track hits to your site,
referring domains and key words
used with search engines to find
your site and display reports to
you about them. This does
require a server with the
FrontPage 2002 extensions
however. The new web publishing
dialog has the look and feel of
FTP in that it allows you to see
the content directories of both
your local site and the remote
site. Other publishing
improvements include single page
publishing by simply right
clicking on a file in your
folder list and selecting
publish from the pop up.
If you looked at the
complete list of new features
in the MS Knowledge Base,
you might have seen some
additional components that you
are excited about. Just make
sure you take note of the
version of server extensions
that are required (if any)
before you go out and purchase
the product just for that
feature.
Obviously we like FrontPage,
that is why we built this site.
For serious ASP developers who
write their own code, FrontPage
still makes a good site
management tool. While FrontPage
2002 is not a huge step from
FrontPage 2000, we believe that
for a lot of people, the new
features are worth the upgrade
price. |
